Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for long-term care workers in Calgary.
AUPE represents 90 or so general support workers employed at Walden Heights, a 40-unit continuing care facility owned by the Calgary-based AgeCare. However, they are employed by the Ontario-based Compass Group Canada Limited, otherwise known as Marquise Hospitality.
These workers include cooks, cook assistants, food services aides, dishwashers, laundry aides, and housekeeping assistants.
Their most recent collective agreement expired over 2 years ago, in June 2024. That agreement was not negotiated and ratified until nearly 3.5 years after the previous one had already expired.
Do not expect a quick resolution on a new agreement, especially since a year ago, the workers’ bargaining committee had only started working on the bargaining proposals and had yet to meet with the employer, even though the agreement had been expired for a year already.
Bargaining itself started this past January, a year and a half after the last one expired.
Talks broke down pretty early after Compass Group reps refused every offer the workers put on the table over 4 days of bargaining, so the two parties went to informal mediation.
Despite receiving wage offers in January, when the employer came to the mediation table in April, they still had no counteroffer. However, they promised to have a monetary offer in June.
When June arrived, however, Compass Group wanted to cancel the sessions scheduled for that month, claiming that they had not been told how much money they would receive from the provincial government, which meant they could not make a monetary offer.
Mediation with Compass Group ended up being just one day of informal mediation before the two parties moved to formal mediation. The employer’s monetary offer in formal mediation “would have left many of [the workers] working for less than a minimum wage”, according to the workers’ bargaining team.
However, Compass Group reps did not even show up to the mediation meeting scheduled for 22 June, which was supposed to have advanced to formal mediation.
Frustrated with the entire process over an 8-month period, the workers’ bargaining team filed a bad faith complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board this summer.
The two parties met together last month with the help of the mediator, according to last week’s update. Compass Group finally came prepared with a wage proposal.
Originally, they proposed 9% over 3 years:
| 2024 | 2.00% |
| 2025 | 3.00% |
| 2026 | 4.00% |
| 9.00% |
Then they presented another offer that lowered the increases in the second and third year but added a 4th year with 5% in the final year.
| 2024 | 2.00% |
| 2025 | 2.00% |
| 2026 | 2.50% |
| 2027 | 5.00% |
| 11.50% |
The first offer averaged 3% per year. The adjusted offer averages 2.88% per year, so it is actually a worse offer.
Keep in mind, that most public sector agreements in Alberta over the last year and a half or so have received 12% over 4 years, or 3% per year.
To rationalize their offer, Compass Group claimed that it was similar to what workers at other continuing facilities where workers are members with the Canadian Union of Public Employees.
What they failed to disclose is that those workers are already making more than what the workers at Walden Heights get.
Here is a breakdown of the starting hourly wages that CUPE workers get, the starting wages AUPE workers get, and how much starting wages would be for AUPE workers at the end of the proposed 4-year agreement.
| CUPE current | AUPE current | AUPE 2027 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cook | $24.72 | $19.29 | $21.60 |
| Cook assistant | $22.65 | $16.04 | $18.14 |
| Housekeeping | $20.72 | $16.04 | $17.96 |
| Laundry aide | $20.72 | $16.04 | $17.96 |
| Food services aide | $20.72 | $16.04 | $17.96 |
Most workers at Walden Heights make barely more than minimum wage. Even after all the wage increases, those same workers would still be making only roughly $18 an hour.
Keep in mind that the living wage in Calgary is $26.50 an hour.
As well, we should consider how wages over the last two collective agreements have performed next to inflation.
| 2 June 2017 | 2.00% |
| 2 June 2018 | 2.00% |
| 2 June 2019 | 2.00% |
| 2 June 2020 | 1.50% |
| 2 June 2021 | 1.75% |
| 2 June 2022 | 1.75% |
| 2 June 2023 | 1.75% |
That works out to a combined 12.75%, or 13.47% if we account for compounded increases.
Between June 2016 and June 2023, the consumer price index increased 28.1 points, from 136.3 points to 164.4 points. That is a 20.62% jump.
Since these workers got a 12.75% (13.47%) increase during a period that saw inflation at 20.10%, these workers had a cut to real wages of 7.87% (7.15%) by the end of their last agreement.
And increase of 9% over 3 years or 11.50% over 4 years would definitely eliminate that. However, spreading those increases over 3 years or 4 years means more years of inflation.
For example, between June 2023 and June 2026, inflation has already increased another 8.39%. That is almost the entire wage increase from the first offer, with only being halfway through the proposed agreement.
Compass Group should be either proposing an 11% wage increase in the first year alone just to cover lost wages and the first year of inflation or offering market adjustments to bring wages up to the level that the CUPE workers are being paid for to do the same work in the same industry in the same city.
