Last month, Alberta Labour Relations added a new collective agreement to their collective bargaining agreements database. The new agreement is for 130 bus drivers in Edmonton.
These drivers are employed in the Dedicated Accessible Transit Service division, otherwise known as DATS, which provides door-to-door, shared public transportation service for Edmontonians who can’t use regular transit, usually because of physical or cognitive disabilities.
The previous contract for these drivers, which are represented by Local 569 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, expired in December 2021, which means the drivers had been without a new contract for a little over two years.
Drivers gathered together on 5 December at the Edmonton Tower to vote on the new contract, with the majority of those who showed up choosing to ratify it. The contract was officially settled by both the workers and the employer a week later, on the 12th.
The new contract has yet to be made public, but Alberta Labour Relations has released details on wage increases. Workers can expect to receive two increases in this contract, both of them retroactive.
The first is effective to the expiry of the previous contract, 19 December 2021, and will be 1%. The second is backdated to 1 January 2023 and will be 2%, bringing the total wage increase during the contract to 3%, or 3.03% if we account for accumulating increases.
Keep in mind that the consumer price index for Alberta sat at 144.8 in December 2020, the last time they received a wage increase. Two years later, in December 2022, it sat at 160.8. That’s an increase of 16 points, or 11.05%.
So, while the workers are set to get a 3.03% wage increase for the two years covered by this contract, inflation increased 11.05% during this same period.
That means the drivers will see a reduction in their real wages, which are wages adjusted for inflation.
Because inflation is at 11.05% and the wage increase will be only 3.03%, the workers will see a reduction in real wages of 8.02%.
In other words, for every $100 the spent on goods and services in December 2020, it would cost them $108.02 to purchase the same goods and services. Or to put it another way, that same $100 would allow them to purchase only $91.98 in goods and services.
And that’s not even counting the increase to inflation during 2023.
Coming into this new contract, the end rate—or the maximum wage a worker could make—for these workes was $33.27 an hour. By the end of this contract, the end rate will have increased to $34.27.
Local 569 also reported that a majority of the workers also voted last month to join the other Edmonton transit drivers to become single bargaining unit. The two units have been separate for over 25 years.
Negotiations on a new contract for both sets of drivers will begin early this year.
