Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published their May 2024 Bargaining Update, which includes details on recently settled collective agreements.
One of the agreements was between the Health Sciences Association of Alberta and Canadian Blood Services.
HSAA represents about 191 paramedical technical workers employed with CBS in Calgary and Edmonton, including medical laboratory technologists, laboratory assistants, donor care associates, phlebotomist, clerks, shippers and receivers, and medical services representatives.
Canadian Blood Services is an independent, not-for-profit charitable organization that provides blood and blood products for transfusion, manages a formulary of plasma protein and related products used in a wide array of medical conditions, and also manages stem cell registry services and cord blood banking, on behalf of all provincial and territorial governments except Quebec. They also operate a national transplant registry.
Mediation Services didn’t provide a copy of the new collective agreement, so I won’t be able to comprehensively review all the changes between it and the previous government.
The previous contract for these workers expired in March 2021. When that contract was settled in February 2021, it covered over 240 workers, which means that CBS is now employing about 50 fewer paramedical technicians now that it was 3 years ago.
The new 3-year contract, which had to sat in mediation for nearly 8 months, is retroactive to 1 April 2024, and it includes 3 wage increases.
| 1 Oct 2021 | 1.00% |
| 1 Sep 2022 | 1.25% |
| 1 Apr 2023 | 2.00% |
That is a combined increase of 4.25% during the life of the contract, or 1.42% per year, on average.
In their previous contract, they had 4 years of wage freezes, which means the last time they received a raise was back in 2016.
So, when we tack on the extra 4 years on to the 4.25% raise for this new contract, it changes the annual average increase to just 0.61%.
In April 2016, Alberta’s consumer price index sat at 135.1. Eight years later, in April 2024, it had jumped by 33.5 points to 168.6, or 24.79%.
So, during the last 8 years, while inflation has risen by nearly 25%, these workers are getting a 4.25% increase. Inflation was nearly 6 times higher than their new raise.
This means that the real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—for these workers have actually decreased by 20.55% since 2016.
In other words, for every $1,000 they spent on goods and services in April 2016, it costs them $1,205.50 to buy the same goods and services today.
To put it another way, if they tried to spend that same $1,000 today, they’d be able to afford only $794.50 worth of the same goods and services.
And to top it off, because the employer dragged their feet on bargaining, this new 3-year contract has already expired, as of March 2024. So, the bargaining team will get very little rest before having to begin negotiating on the next contract.
On the plus side, it took four years to settle their previous contract, so I guess it could’ve been worse.
Hopefully, they employer doesn’t hold up negotiations for years again, and hopefully they offer their workers fair compensation in the next contract. This offer was pathetic.
