Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the September–October 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In the months of September and October, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 36 private sector and 31 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 3,408 and 4,855 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for 9 workers employed by Aramark Refreshment Services, which provides beverage products for businesses.
The workers are represented by Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers and include service technicians and warehouse workers.
Their previous contract actually expired two years ago, in November 2022.
The new contract was settled over a year later, last December. It was retroactive to 11 November 2022.
According to the bargaining update, these workers are supposed to receive wage increases in each year of the new 5-year contract, which expires next in May 2029.
| 3 November 2022 | 2.00% |
| 3 November 2023 | 3.00% |
| 3 November 2024 | 4.00% |
| 3 November 2025 | 4.50% |
That’s a combined 13.5% over 5 years—14.18% if you account for cumulative increases—or an average of 3.38% (3.54%) per year.
Here’s a look at wage increase in the previous contract:
| 3 November 2016 | 2.00% |
| 3 November 2017 | 2.00% |
| 3 November 2018 | 2.00% |
| 3 November 2019 | 2.00% |
| 2 November 2020 | 1.50% |
| 2 November 2021 | 1.50% |
That’s 11% (11.51%) over 6 years, or an annual average of 1.83% (1.92%).
Inflation, however, during the same period was 12.55%, with the consumer price index in Alberta rising 16.9 points, from 134.7 in November 2015 to 151.6 in November 2021.
This means despite a pretty significant wage increase over 6 years, these workers ultimately received a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 1.5% (1.04%) during the same period.
As a result, their 2% wage increase in 2022 ends up being a 0.5% increase. And when you add on 6.59% inflation between November 2021 and November 2022, that first wage increase is actually a real wage cut of 6.09%.
When we look at inflation between November 2021 (the last wage increase in the previous contract) and September 2024 (the latest data we have), it’s increased by 11.61%.
Add on the cut to real wages of 1.5% from the previous contract, and we are left with 13.11% of the 13.5% wage increase already used up. And we still have two more full years left in the 4-year contract, so it’s highly unlikely this new contract will be sufficient to help these workers keep up with the cost of living that has skyrocketed over the last 3 years.
Here are some highlights of other changes between the new contract, and their previous contract, which was their first contract.
Under the previous contract, workers who were laid off for over 120 days were considered terminated and lost their seniority. The new contract has increased the cut off to 1 year.
As well, workers who failed to indicate a willingness to return to work within 3 days of being recalled now has 5 days to respond, and where they had 5 days to show up after agreeing to a recall, they now get a full week.
Plus, workers now have 3 days to miss work consecutively without authorization or a valid reason before being terminated, but had only 2 days under the previous contract.
Workers could request an extra 2 days of unpaid leave in addition to their 3 paid days of bereavement leave. The potential unpaid leave has been increased to 3 days.
Maternity leave has been increased from 15 weeks of unpaid leave to 17 weeks of unpaid leave.
There has been a change to paid vacation leave:
| Old | New | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Years employed | Vacation | Years employed | Vacation |
| Under 1 | 1 day per month of service | Under 1 | 1 day per month of service |
| 1–9 | 3 weeks | 1–5 | 3 weeks |
| 5–9 | 4 weeks | ||
| 9–14 | 4 weeks | 9–14 | 5 weeks |
| 14–25 | 5 weeks | 14–19 | 6 weeks |
| Over 25 | 6 weeks | Over 19 | 7 weeks |
Another addition to the new contract is paid breaks. If a worker is scheduled for a 4 hour shift, they are entitled to one paid 15-minute rest break. They get an additional one if they work at least 6 hours.
Workers now get a $300 health spending account for each calendar year.
As well, the footwear allowance has increased from $100 a year to $140, and the workers no longer have to purchase and then submit a reimbursement.
The uniform maintenance premium has increased from $3 per week to $5 per week.
There was also changes to language to make it more gender inclusive and less clunky grammatically (changing “his/her” to “their”, for example).
