Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the July 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In July, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 26 private sector and 10 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,032 and 6,698 workers respectively.
One of those settlements was for 4 workers employed by Cenovus Energy at the company’s Grande Prairie location, which it took over from Husky after the two companies amalgamated in 2021.
They had been without a new contract since their previous one expired at the end of 2022. The workers and the employers finally settled on a new contract just this past February, over a year later.
The new 3-year contract is retroactive to the beginning of 2023 and will expire in December 2025. It includes wage increases, the first two being retroactive.
| 1 January 2023 | 5.0% |
| 1 January 2024 | 3.5% |
| 1 January 2025 | 3.5% |
That works out to a combined increase of 12% per year, or 12.48% if you account for compound increases. The annual average is 4.16%.
This is much better than the increases they received in their previous contract, which averaged 2.94% per year.
| 1 February 2019 | 2.50% |
| 1 February 2020 | 2.75% |
| 1 February 2021 | 3.00% |
| 1 February 2022 | 3.50% |
These new increases will help these workers respond to the rising cost of living as they try to support themselves and their families. This is also similar to raises received by workers at the nearby Imperial refinery and who are also represented by Unifor.
The consumer price index in Alberta in February 2018 was 139.7. By January 2023, it had increased 20.8 points to 160.5, a 14.89% jump.
That left the workers with a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 2.61% by the end of their last contract. The increases in the first two years of the new contract will help make up for that real wage cut, as well as cover inflation over the last two years, which has increased 5.55% in the year and a half since January 2023.
Hopefully the final two increases will cover inflation the rest of this year, as well as the final year of the contract. Inflation for the first half of 2024 has already been 2.71%.
The only other significant change I found in the new contract was an increase in the travel allowance, which is for workers having to workers who must travel to the companies sites in Wapiti. It will increase from $31.60 at the end of the previous contract to $35.54 by the end of this new contract.
