Camrose care home offers workers 12% raise

Alberta Union of Provincial Employees recently published an update on their website regarding negotiations for care workers in Camrose.

The employer, Bethany Group, is a Christian organization based out of Camrose and provides health and housing services in 30 communities throughout Central Alberta.

These workers are employed with at the organization’s Rosehaven Care Centre, Wetaskiwin Home Care, and Bethany long term care, which includes all auxiliary hospital, nursing home, and designated supportive housing sites.

They include licensed practical nurses, health care aides, supportive living workers, cooks, housekeepers, maintenance workers, and administrative assistants.

The most recent collective agreement for these 500 or so workers expired in March 2024, more than 2.5 years ago. That agreement took over 3 years from the expiry of the previous one to be negotiated and ratified.

In the agreement, workers got 1.5% in each of 2022 and 2023. That 2022 increase was the first raise some of these workers had seen since 2017, having wage freezes forced on them for 4 years in a row.

Bargaining began in February 2025. The bargaining team for the workers managed to make progress in negotiations, but after a year of bargaining, it became clear that Bethany Group had no intention of moving further.

By May 2026, Bethany Group had agreed to 4 years of 3% wage increases, the last of which will be 6 months from now.

1 April 2024	3.00%
1 April 2025	3.00%
1 April 2026	3.00%
1 April 2027	3.00%

They also agreed to a 5% market adjustment, but it would be for just licensed practical nurses, and it would not be retroactive. In comparison, LPNs with Alberta Health Services got a market adjustment that was twice that much, and it was retroactive to 2024.

Health care aides with AHS got a 4% market adjustment, but Bethany Group had rejected giving their health care aides the same thing, claiming at the time that the $2 hourly top up is sufficient.

Bethany Group had also refused any improvements to benefits, call back pay, on call pay, and transportation.

As a result, the workers’ bargaining team filed for informal mediation, which began this past August.

Mediation has helped Bethany Group move a bit more on their offer, as of September. Annual increases would still be the same, but they have agreed to increase the LPN market adjustment to 10% and make it retroactive to April 2024.

They have not moved on the $2 top-up. Actually, if anything, they have offered to make it worse. They said that they want to change it so that if the provincial government gets rid of the top-up, it would be encouraging—theoretically—there is no guaranteed that a wage reopener would result in an increase.

When the NDP was in power, for example, they gave lots of public sector workers 2 years of wage freezes but a wage reopener in 2019. They lost the 2019 provincial election, and when the UCP came in, they negotiated another freeze in several of those wage reopeners.

A wage reopener could result in better wages than the $2 top up these workers are getting now; however, it could also result in another wage freeze.

Bethany Group has offered partial reimbursements for registration costs (Up to $300 for LPNs and up to $100 for health care aides). The workers’ bargaining team wants these fees fully reimbursed, regardless of the price.

The workers’ bargaining team has proposed increasing the flexible spending account, the long service increment, and the amount of massage therapy covered in the benefit plan. Bethany Group rejected all of these.

Under the previous collective agreement, on-call workers must be 20 minutes away from the call-out and no further than 30 kilometres from the facility. Bethany Group wants to increase this to 45 minutes and 70 kilometres, even though workers told their bargaining team that they are opposed to increasing the distance they would travel while on call.