Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their final new applications report for October 2026, which included all applications they received between the 18th and 25th of October.
One of those applications was for union certification.
The application was filed on the 20th by Local 1-207 of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, otherwise known as the United Steelworkers or USW.
They filed the application on behalf of 19 workers employed by Flight Centre Travel Group (Canada) Inc. in the operations division of their downtown Calgary location, including if they are working remotely. The proposed bargaining unit would not include anyone above the rank of team leader.
The employer is the Canadian arm of the Australia-based Flight Centre Travel Group and specializes in leisure and corporate travel sales.
To submit a union certification application in Alberta, the workers (or the affiliated union) must demonstrate support among at least 40% of the workers who would be part of the proposed bargaining unit. In this case, that will be 8 workers.
The labour board has scheduled a hearing for this application, which will occur tomorrow afternoon. During the hearing, representatives from the employer can present arguments, if they have any, as to why these workers should not be able to unionize with the Steelworkers.
Listed in the application summary as representatives of Flight Centre are Lisa Baker, vice president of people experience in the Americas, who is based out of Vancouver; Chris Lynes, a managing director out of Toronto; and Laura Dunnigan, a lawyer who is a partner at the Calgary law firm Mathews Dinsdale and specializes on advising employers in multiple sectors, including transportation.
Should the ALRB approve the application, they will conduct a certification vote, giving the workers the chance to democratically choose whether to unionize.
Assuming the 8 workers I mentioned earlier follow through with their initial intention and vote in favour of unionization, they would need to convince just 2 more fellow workers to join them.
If a majority of workers vote in favour of unionization and the labour board awards a certificate, one of their first items of business will be to elect their bargaining committee and begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included last week’s report below for your convenience.
