Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their latest new applications report for August 2025. In it was an application for union certification.
Local 955 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, otherwise known as IUOE, filed the application on 8 August 2025 in behalf of workers employed by Aecon Civil Construction Corp.
Actually, it was 6 applications, 2 each for Aecon Civil Construction Corp., Aecon Construction Solutions Inc., and Aecon Transportation West Ltd.
All 3 companies are divisions of Aecon Group Inc, an Ontario-based company that specializes in the development and construction of infrastructure. Aecon has a head office in Calgary.
The union has applied to represent all general construction carpenters and roadbuilding and heavy construction carpenters employed in Alberta by Aecon.
According to the report summary for these applications, only 9 workers would qualify to be represented by this proposed bargaining unit.
What is interesting about these applications is that these workers are already represented by Local 63 of the Christian Labour Association of Canada.
Even more interesting is that the ALRB awarded 4 certificates to CLAC just last month for “all general construction employees”, “roadbuilding and heavy construction labourers”, “roadbuilding and heavy construction carpenters”, and “roadbuilding and heavy construction operating engineers” employed by Aecon Civil Construction Corp.
In fact, according to the ALRB’s current list of active certificates, CLAC holds 18 union certificates for workers employed by Aecon. However, as of March 2023, only 20 of those workers were covered by an existing collective agreement, which expires in October.
Looks like IUOE is trying to take these workers away from CLAC, who only barely received certification for them.
For a union to apply for certification over a bargaining unit, they must demonstrate support for unionization from 40% of the workers who would fall under the bargaining unit. In this case, that would be 4 workers.
The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this application. It will occur next Friday (22nd) and will be an opportunity for not only Aecon but also CLAC to argue, if they choose to, why they think these workers should be unable to join Local 955 of IUOE.
Should the ALRB approve the application, they will hold a certification vote, giving the workers a chance to vote on whether to switch unions.
Assuming the 4 workers who have already indicated support follow through and vote in favour of unionization, they would need to convince just one more worker to vote with them to certify them as a collective bargaining unit.
If the workers end up unionizing, their first step will be to form a bargaining committee to begin negotiating their first collective agreement with Aecon.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have include a copy of this week’s report below for your convenience.
