Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their new applications report covering the period between 1 December and 12 December 2025. In it was a new application for union certification.
Local 56 of the Christian Labour Association of Canada, otherwise known as Logistics Manufacturing, and Allied Trades Union, filed the application on 10 December 2025.
They want to certify 417 poultry workers employed by Maple Leaf Foods Inc. in Edmonton.
The problem, however, is that these workers already have a union certification: with Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
A majority of workers at this poultry processing plant voted in favour of joining UFCW 401 in the summer of 2023, and the ALRB issued their certification on the 4th of August.
CLAC does not have a positive reputation among the broader labour movement, which accuses them of masquerading as a labour union while using employer accommodationist strategies that undermine other unions.
In fact, in 2018, CLAC teamed up with the British Columbia Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, an employer lobby group, and an open shop industry association to sue the BC government for favouring building trades unions in public infrastructure projects. You cannot get more pro-employer than that.
Here is where it gets a bit interesting.
You see, before the ALRB issued a certificate to UFCW 401, these workers were members of CLAC 56. But shortly after their last collective agreement under CLAC 56 expired in July 2023, a majority of these workers voted in favour of joining UFCW 401.
It looks like CLAC did not take to kindly to these workers democratically choosing to cancel their memberships with CLAC, and they want them back.
But CLAC actually started this back and forth, when they poached the workers from UFCW’s Local 1118 in 2017.
To file for union certification in Alberta, a union (or a group pretending to be one) must indicate to the ALRB that they have initial support from at least 40% of the workers who would be represented by the proposed bargaining unit.
In this case, that would come to about 165 workers.
That seems like a lot, considering that a majority of workers voted in favour of leaving CLAC in August 2023 and ratified their current collective agreement just last year.
But it might be that CLAC is retaliating because of more than UFCW bringing their members back after CLAC poached them the first time.
Last month, for example, Local 955 of the International Union of Operating Engineers announced that over 800 workers employed by OEM Remanufacturing Company had voted to leave CLAC and join them for representation.
IUOE 955 claimed that this was the largest number of workers to leave CLAC in Canadian history.
I do find it interesting that CLAC would file this application less than a month after losing their OEM workers, even though the current collective agreement for these Maple Leaf workers does not expire until 2027.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of this report below.
