Last month, Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers posted an update regarding collective agreement bargaining for food workers in Calgary.
The workers are employed by Canada Malting Co. Limited. They include equipment operators, maintenance workers, lab workers, and student workers.
Their previous contract expired back in March, and negotiations for the new contract started last month.
Local 401 included a copy of all their proposals that the workers’ bargaining committee submitted to the employer during the first round of bargaining on the 9th and 10th of April.
Among those proposals are an immediate 10% wage increase, retroactive to the end of the previous contract. They also want a second 10% increase next year, and a third 10% increase in final year of the contract.
This, of course, brings the combined wage increase proposed to 30%. The employer hasn’t presented any wage proposals.
These workers got only 8.2% over 3 years in their last contract. Unfortunately, inflation grew by 14.15% during the same period, leaving the workers with a real wage cut of 6%.
I anticipate that Canada Malting will push back on the 30% raise proposal.
Here are a few other proposals the workers’ bargaining team has proposed, based on feedback gathered from the workers.
- Employer pays for required training and certification
- Increase footwear allowance from $350 to $450 per year
- Introduce $30 meal allowance for those working at least 2 hours of overtime
- Increase night shift premium from $1.50 an hour to $2.00 an hour
- Rest time cutoff to be changed from 23:00 to 21:00
- On-call cell phone premium for maintenance workers to increase from 2 hours per shift to 4 hours
- Lead hand premium to increase from $2 per hour to $3 per hour
- Workers who show up to work for a scheduled shift is guaranteed pay for the entire shift, regardless of whether they end up having work to do that shift.
- Holiday pay to increase from time and a half to double time.
- Afternoon premium to increase from 60¢ to $1 an hour
- Night premium to increase from 70¢ to $1 an hour
- Sunday premium to increase from $1.35 to $2.00 an hour
- New affordability premium of $3 per hour for all workers
- Increase the number of workers from 2 to 3 who can take vacation time during Easter, June, July, August, September, and December
- Remove $60 maximum for paramedical services and the 15-visit limit per year. Add acupuncture and gym memberships.
- Increase vision care from $350 every 2 years to $450. Add eye exams to the coverage.
- Increase health spending account from $200 to $1000 per year
- Change paid vacation entitlements:
| Weeks of vacation | Old years of service | New years of service |
|---|---|---|
| 2 weeks | 1–3 years | 1–3 years |
| 3 weeks | 3–8 years | 3–8 years |
| 4 weeks | 8–15 years | 8–12 years |
| 5 weeks | 15–20 years | 12–17 years |
| 6 weeks | 20+ years | 17–23 years |
| 7 weeks | — | 23+ years |
Canada Malting, however, has focused on just non-monetary proposals for the first round of bargaining. Well, that’s not quite accurate. They have proposed cost sharing of health benefits, which they currently cover entirely. They also want to get rid of the education and training fund, which the workers pay into and then can use to upgrade their skills.
