Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the December 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In December, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 24 private sector and 10 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,429 and 3,797 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about 100 workers employed by Buffalo Catering Employees Limited. These workers are represented by Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
Buffalo Catering is a division of Civeo Canada. Through Buffalo Catering, Civeo provides camp lodging throughout the Wood Buffalo area, where their workers provide meals and lodging to fellow workers in the oil and gas sector.
The workers include cooks, bakers, other kitchen workers, housekeeper, housing workers, retail workers, front desk attendants, and maintenance workers.
The previous contract for the workers expired at the end of 2023. The new contract was settled about 3 months later, in March 2024; although Mediation Services only recently received a copy.
When the previous contract was published by Mediation Services, it listed 377 workers, which means that Buffalo Catering lost nearly 300 of its unionized workers since 2021.
According to the bargaining update, these workers will receive no wage increases in their new less-than-two-years contract.
And they got only a 5.36% increase in their previous contract.
This is better than the raises they got their last contract:
That was a total of 9.5%, or an average of 2.38% per year.
The consumer price index for Alberta changed from 136.9 in June 2017 (when they received their last wage increase prior to their last contract) to 164.4 in June 2023. This increase of 27.5 points represented a 20.1% increase.
With inflation at 20.1% but wages increased at just 5.36% in their last contract, these workers saw their real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—drop by 14.73%.
Getting 3 years (2024, 2025, and 2026) of wage freezes will just make this situation worse.
For example, between June 2023 and June 2024, the consumer price index in Alberta increased an additional 3.04%, bring their loss in real wages to 17.77%. And we still have 2.5 more years of inflation to go before this contract expires.
On top of this, the employer introduced a two-tiered wage structure, with the workers employed at Conklin Lodge receiving significantly less than the rest of the unionized Buffalo coworkers. In fact, 5 job classifications at Conklin Lodge will make less than $20 an hour during this contract.
Here are some changes between the previous contract and the new contract.
If Buffalo Catering assigns someone other than a designated trainer to conduct training, the worker will receive the training premium, in addition to their regular pay rate.
National Day for Truth and Reconciliation has been added to the General Holidays list, which is used to determine stat holiday pay. This brings the total number of holidays in that list to 13.
When workers are laid off, they now have the option to continue their their extended health, dental, and life insurance benefits until their recall rights expire. There’s a catch though: they have to pay entirely out of their own pocket for those benefits.
If a worker is injured on the job, the employer will arrange transportation to a healthcare facility and back to the work site. The previous contract had them responsible for transportation to just the healthcare facility.
Queer folks have been added to the anti-discrimination section of the collective agreement. On top of that, the company has promised to keep the identities and health information of queer workers confidential and private, handling any documentation or communication with sensitivity and discretion.
The contract now tells the employer not to out trans workers without the explicit approval of that worker. More precisely, it states that the employer will, at the request of the worker, mutually agree on a way to notify coworkers of the trans worker’s identity or transition. They will also encourage coworkers to use the trans worker’s chosen name and pronouns.
Also new to the contract is that any allegation of a violation of the anti-discrimination section will be bumped to step two of the grievance procedure.
The travel subsidy has been reduced from $325 a month to $125 a month.
The new contract has a start date of 31 March 2024, two days after it was settled by the two parties. This means that any changes were not retroactive to the end of the previous contract, which itself had been retroactive to its predecessor.
