Last week, Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for food workers in Calgary.
These more than 100 workers are employed by Trophy Foods in their Foothills Industrial Park facility, where the workers produce packaged nuts, dried fruits, confectionery, and bulk foods.
Their last collective agreement with Trophy Foods expired over a year ago, in February 2023, but bargaining didn’t begin until June.
After months of no meaningful movement on bargaining, the parties went to mediation, meeting with the mediator virtually on 8 January.
The next day, Trophy Foods presented the workers’ bargaining team with what they labelled as their final offer after months of bargaining, but the workers voted to reject that offer.
The mediator, Rick Wilson, has kept in touch with the two parties, and asked them to return to mediation. The workers’ bargaining team agreed to go to mediation on condition that Trophy Foods improve their offer. They warned the employer if the offer remained unchanged, the workers were ready to hold a strike vote.
Trophy Foods claimed that they couldn’t meet the demands that the workers had proposed, citing, according to the mediator, “increased competition, margin pressures, reduced volumes, and raw material costs”. They employers claims they are “committed” to remaining Calgary but said that they can’t “agree to contractual terms that would price them out of an increasingly competitive market”.
The company said in last week’s virtual mediation session that their previous offer was “fair”, but the union reminded them that the workers rejected that offer and that it wasn’t an “acceptable” offer.
Wilson took this feedback from both parties and issued a second recommendation.
Included in this recommendation is a combined 8.6% wage increase over 4 years. Here’s how it breaks down per year.
| 1 March 2023 | 0.0% |
| 1 March 2024 | 4.0% |
| 1 March 2025 | 2.4% |
| 1 March 2026 | 2.2% |
That’s an average increase of 2.87% per year, which is higher than the 1.5% increase they received, on average, per year in their previous contract.
In March 2022, the last time these workers received a raise, the consumer price index in Alberta was 156.5. Two years later, in March 2024, it sat at 167.3. That’s an increase of 6.9%.
That means that the 4% wage increase in the second year of the contract won’t be enough to allow worker pay to catch up with inflation over the last two years.
Now, 8.6% would be more than enough to make up for the 6.9% spike in inflation; however, that assumes that inflation will be less than 1.7% this year and next year combined, and that seems unlikely.
If these workers accept this contract, they will likely receive a cut to their real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—by the time it expires in February 2027.
And that’s not even considering the fact that these workers received only a 6% wage increase in the last contract despite inflation passing 15% during the same period, so they were already coming into negotiations with less purchasing power than they had in the spring of 2018.
That being said, anyone working for Trophy Foods at time of ratification will also receive a one-time payment of $2,500. Plus, anyone working at least 10 years for the company will receive an additional $500.
Keep in mind, however, that these are lump sum payments, so they won’t increase the base salary that next year’s raise will be based on.
Here are a few of the other recommendation Wilson made to the two parties.
- Union representatives can address new workers for up to 30 minutes on paid time within 5 days of being hired.
- Reducing the number of shop stewards per shift from 4 to 2
- Workers on parental leave would need to provide the employer 4 weeks notice if they want to resume employment. It used to be 3 weeks.
- Unpaid leave for workers who have by subpoenaed to appear in court
- Both parties will have their Joint Health and Safety Committee members reduced from 5 to 3.
- Footwear allowance to increase from $100 per year to $125
- Workers won’t be required to be vaccinated as a condition of employment
- Tool allowance for millwrights and tradespeople will increase from $350 per year to $400.
- The employer will contribute $750 a year to the union’s education and training fund.
Voting on the mediator’s recommendation will take place in person on Monday, and online voting will occur on Tuesday. The workers’ bargaining team will conduct an information session tomorrow morning at the Glenmore Inn and Convention Centre in Calgary.
Update (3 July 2024): The workers voted in favour of ratifying this contract, which was officially settled on 7 May 2024.
