Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their final new applications report of January 2026. In it was an application for union certification.
Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers filed the application on 23 January 2026 on behalf of around 30 workers employed by Caffe Rosso Inc.
The Calgary-based company, also known as Rosso Coffee Roasters, owns 5 cafe locations in Calgary.
According to the application summary provided by the ALRB, Local 401 is applying for all those workers employed by Rosso except any in office or clerical positions.
For a workplace to apply for union certification in Alberta, workers must demonstrate support from at least 40% of those who would be part of the bargaining unit.
In this case, that would be 13 workers.
Should the ALRB approve this application, and assuming all 13 of those workers follow through on their initial intention, they would need to convince just 4 more of their fellow workers to vote in favour of unionizing with Local 401.
ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this Friday (6th) regarding this application, during which time, the employer can present arguments, if they have any, as to why they think these workers should not unionize with Local 401.
If the ALRB approves the application and a majority of workers vote in favour of unionizing, one of their first orders of business would be to form a bargaining committee to begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new applications reports, I have included a copy of this week’s report below.
