Calgary nurses file for unionization

Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published a new applications report, which included applications that had been filed between the 8th and the 15th of this month.

Included in the report were two applications from the United Nurses of Alberta and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees for a union certification vote.

AUPE and UNA filed their applications on 8 April on behalf of workers employed by AgeCare.

Based in Calgary, AgeCare manages over 50 aging-in-place facilities in Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario.

According to the application, AUPE and UNA are filing to represent about 2 dozen workers providing either direct nursing care or nursing instruction at the company’s 215-bed Glenmore facility, located in the southwest Calgary community of Pump Hill.

AgeCare workers are already unionized at several of the company’s locations, through AUPE, Local 401 of United Food and Commercial Workers, and the UNA.

The UNA has collective agreements with AgeCare for workers employed at the Midnapore and Valleyview facilities; although both of those contracts expired shortly after being ratified in 2021. The two parties have yet to negotiate new contracts.

As well, about 2 dozen of nursing workers employed at AgeCare’s Skypointe facility joined the UNA in 2019, but they still don’t have their first contract.

AUPE has collective agreements with AgeCare for workers employed at their Glenmore, Seton, Skypointe, and Walden Heights in Calgary; their Columbia facility in Lethbridge; their Valleyview facility in Medicine Hat; their Sunrise Gardens facility in Brooks; and the Sagewood facility in Strathmore.

The collective agreements for the workers at the Calgary facilities—other than Walden Heights—all expire later this year, and the Lethbridge and Medicine Hat workers have been without a new contract since their old one expired over a year ago. The contracts for the Brooks and Strathmore workers expired in 2018, about 5.5 years ago.

The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this application. It’s scheduled for tomorrow, during which time, the employer will have a chance to argue why the workers shouldn’t be allowed to join these unions.

If the application is approved, the ALRB will hold a certification vote, and the workers will have a chance to choose whether to join the unions.

Because the ALRB doesn’t archive their new application reports, I’ve included this report below.

Update (23 May 2024): According to the UNA, nurses are this location voted in favour of joining their union, and the ALRB certified that vote on 14 May.