Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, Trade, and Immigration published their December 2025 Bargaining Update.
The monthly report provides information about Alberta’s unionized workforce, primarily collective agreement settlement information the department received in December 2025.
Last month, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 40 bargaining relationships encompassing 21,601 employees. Of those relationships, 17 were in the private sector and 23 were in the public sector, covering 2,128 and 19,473 employees respectively.
One of those collective agreements was for about 10 workers employed by Heidelberg Materials Canada, which itself is a subsidiary of the Germany-based Heidelberg Materials.
According to the union certificate they received just this past October, these workers are all those employed at the company’s Acheson, Strathcona County, and Edmonton batch plants and garages, except office, quality control personnel, dispatchers, truck/mixer drivers and those covered by a Teamsters certificate.
They are members of Local 955 of the International Union of Operating Engineers and include heavy duty mechanics, welders, batch plant operators, load operators, and labourers.
Even though Mediation Services published an update on this new agreement earlier this month, it was actually ratified back in July. Their last collective agreement expired in last Feburary
The new agreement includes 3 percentage-based wage increases, the first of which was retroactive:
| 1 March 2025 | 3.00% |
| 1 March 2026 | 2.50% |
| 1 March 2027 | 3.00% |
It also included another raise that was a dollar amount and came into effect a week after ratification. The amount varied between $1.31 an hour and $2.38 an hour, depending on the job classification.
This is better than their last collective agreement, which gave them a 3% increase in their first year and a 2.5% increase in each of the final two years.
By the time this new collective agreement expires, the lowest base wage will be just a few pennies shy of $30 an hour.
Here are some more changes between the previous collective agreement and the new one:
Shifts have changed from 8 hours per day, Monday to Friday, to 8.5 hours per day.
Previously, workers were paid for their 30-minute lunch break. Now, their lunch break is unpaid. If the employer requires a worker to work through their break or end their break early, they will be compensated for the extra work at their regular pay rate.
The following was added to the collective agreement:
In the event that the company has not had the opportunity to evaluate a new employee during the [90-day] probationary period the company will provide written notice to the union for a one-time extension period of 30 days. Requests to extend probationary periods will not unreasonably be denied.
Heidelberg agreed to increase their contribution to the Operating Engineers Local 955 Health and Wellness Trust Fund from $1.85 an hour per worker to $1.90 an hour. This will increase to $1.95 an hour this March.
New to the collective agreement is an enhanced premium contribution into the health and wellness trust fund. For workers who are older than 71, Heidelberg has agreed to contribute $2.15 an hour effective March 2025 and $2.20 an hour as of this upcoming March.
Pension contributions from Heidelberg have increased from $4.50 an hour to $4.60 an hour.
There is a new dual ticket premium for journey-level heavy duty mechanics and welders who must maintain multiple trade tickets. These workers will receive an additional $1.50 for every hour they work.
As well, overall language has been improved to be more gender inclusive (replacing he/she with they, for example).
