Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the January 2025 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In December, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 28 private sector and 11 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 4,351 and 944 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about 40 workers employed by the Bonnyville Regional Fire Authority.
The workers in this collective agreement are all employed as either advanced care paramedics, primary care paramedics, and emergency medical responders.
They’re represented by the Health Sciences Association of Alberta.
The previous contract for these workers expired in July 2024. The new contract was settled in September 2024, 2 months later; although Mediation Services only recently received their copy.
The new collective agreement is for just 2 years, expiring in March 2026. Oddly, it’s effective as of last April, 4 months before the last one expired. The previous agreement was also for two years, but that was a departure from the 4-year contract they had prior to that one.
Most of the workers are set to receive wage increases in every year of their new contract, starting with an Alberta Health Services alignment, which will see an increase of between 0% and 6.5% as of last April. Then most everyone was supposed to receive a 3.5% increase as of this past January.
Workers in levels 10 through 12 in the wage scale didn’t receive any wage increases in this contract.
Here are some changes between the the new collective agreement and their previous one.
The following has been added to the article on core flex shift:
An employee who works half of a core flex or 12-hour shift shall be paid straight time for all 12 hours at their basic rate of pay unless such hours entitle the employee to be paid overtime, for which the applicable rate of pay will be paid.
Workers who exchange shifts with each other now have to make it sure the shifts they exchange occur within 2 weeks of each other; there was no limit in the previous agreement.
As well, workers can longer give away their shifts to other workers (without trading shifts) unless they’ve used up or at least allocated all their vacation time. This restriction wasn’t in the previous contract.
The following have been added to the article on scheduling:
When any employee’s schedule has been changed by the employer, previously booked time off will be honoured with no loss to the employee.
Shift pick up within 1 month shall be approved or denied with an explanation within 7 calendar days.
Overtime pay and holiday pay have increased from 1.5 times the base pay rate to 2 times the base pay rate.
The on-call premium has increased from $3.30 an hour to $3.50 an hour.
A weekend premium of $3.25 an hour has been introduced in the new contract for any hours worked between 20:00 on Friday and 08:00 on Monday.
The shift supervisor premium has increased from $2.00 an hour to $2.5 an hour.
As well, a new lead supervisor premium has been introduced, as follows:
When an employee agrees to be assigned duties as lead supervisor, by a division chief or designate, the employee shall be paid an additional $4.50 per hour. This premium shall not constitute part of the employee’s basic rate of pay for overtime calculations. The terms of this collective agreement will continue to apply to the employee so assigned.
In the previous agreement, lead supervisor was a position with its own listing in the wage tables.
The following have been removed from the article on out-of-scope pay.
While the employee is out-of-scope, they shall not benefit from any terms and conditions of the collective agreement, including seniority.
Upon return to former position, a new seniority date will be calculated not inclusive of time served in out-of-scope position
Workers can accumulate unused sick leave to a maximum of 650 hours, up from 505 hours in the last contract.
New to the collective agreement is personal leave. Eligible workers will be entitled to 2 personal days of 12 hours each in every calendar year. They cannot be carried over into the next calendar year. The personal days won’t be prorated for newly hired workers, which means they’d have to wait until the following calendar year to get personal days.
The duration for writing up a workers for “unsatisfactory performance or conduct” has increased from 10 working days to 20 working days.
Workers who are dismissed shall receive any termination entitlements with 5 days. This was just 3 days in the previous agreement.
Under the previous contract, workers were considered terminated if they missed work for 3 days without food and proper reason. This has been reduced to just 2 days.
The clothing allotment has been increased to include 2 job shirts for full-time workers, 1 job shirt in the annual issue, and 1 job shirt for temporary and casual workers. There were no job shirts listed in the previous collective agreement. Duty belts will also be available if workers can demonstrate a need for them.
As of the new collective agreement, workers will now get a $750 health and wellness spending account.
