Last week, the Health Sciences Association of Alberta posted an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for workers employed by Canadian Blood Services.
HSAA represents about a dozen or so transport drivers in Edmonton.
Their most recent collective agreement expired in March 2021, so they have been waiting for over 5 years for a new collective agreement.
To make matters worse, their last raise was in April 2016, so they have gone over a decade without a wage increase.
Starting wages have been frozen at $20.49 an hour for drivers and $21.28 an hour for mobile drivers ever since that raise.
The bargaining team for the workers—which includes 2 drivers and a labour relations officer from HSAA—were finally able to meet with Canadian Blood Services in November 2023 to exchange their full proposal packages. This is more than 2.5 years after their last agreement had expired.
At that meeting, they singed off on 33 articles in the proposed agreements; however, by the time they met again at the end of the month, they were at an impasse. HSAA filed for voluntary mediation to help the two parties reach an agreement.
Unfortunately, mediation failed to reach an agreement the two parties could agree with, so they went to arbitration.
The arbitration panel consisted of an arbitrator, a member nominated by Canadian Blood Services, and a member nominated by HSAA.
This panel was tasked with reaching a compulsory interest arbitration, otherwise known as binding arbitration.
They have yet to issue their full response; however, on 21 August 2026, the panel issued their bottom-line award, which sets out specific items immediately, before the full award is available.
In this case, the two issues that were in dispute between the two parties were the length of the new agreement and wage increases.
The panel set the duration at 3 years: from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2024.
The wage increases they awarded are as follows:
| 1 October 2021 | 1.00% |
| 1 September 2022 | 1.25% |
| 1 April 2023 | 2.00% |
| 4.25% |
Remember, this is after 4 years of wage freezes.
| 1 April 2017 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2018 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2019 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2020 | 0.00% |
Not only did they give them crappy wage increases, but they made them retroactive to 6 months after the start of the new contract, rather than the start of the new contract.
I call them crappy increases because they are depressingly far below inflation.
The consumer price index in Alberta in April 2016—when their last raise took effect— was 135.1. It had jumped 28.6 points to 163.7 in April 2023, 7 years later. That is a 21.17% increase.
Because inflation was 21.17% during the same time that these workers (will have) received a 4.25% raise, they are left with a cut to real wages of 16.92%.
To put this in perspective, if these worker bought something for $100 in April 2016, they would now be able to afford just $83.08 of the same thing, or at least as of April 2023.
Either that, or it would cost them $116.92 to purchase the same amount as they did in April 2016.
These workers should have received at least 6% per year for the 3 years just to catch up to inflation.
This is a pathetic award. Unsurprisingly, the panel member nominated by Canadian Blood Services agreed with the award. I mean, why would they not?
Needless to say, the panel member nominated by the union dissented with the award.
The next steps will be to form a new bargaining committee to begin negotiating the next collective agreement, which should be effective as of April 2024, which means it is nearly 2.5 year over.
Even though these workers are almost 17 percentage points behind inflation, remember that this is as of April 2023. We have had nearly 3.5 years of more inflation and there will be even more inflation ahead before the next agreement expires.
Hopefully these workers end up with a much better agreement this time around.
2 replies on “Canadian Blood Services drivers get 4.25% raise”
Perhaps the workers should look for a different union representation, this is ridiculous. Having said that I do understand they are up against anti union UCP.
Unfortunately, as the article states, this was not a negotiated agreement. This was forced on them through binding arbitration.