Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published its second new applications report for March 2026. In it was an application for union certification.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed the application on 4 March 2026 on behalf of workers employed by Shepherd’s Care Foundation.
This faith-based non-profit organization provides independent living accommodations for over 1,000 residents in Barrhead, Calgary, and Edmonton.
According to the application summary provided by the ALRB, the union is trying to organize workers employed by “Shepherd’s Care Foundation (Gardens)”, which presumably refers to Shepherd’s Gardens, a wholly-owned entity of Shepherd’s Care Foundation.
Shepherd’s Gardens offers independent living options in the Edmonton metropolitan region.
AUPE specifically wants to unionize over 50 workers employed by Shepherd’s Care / Shepherd’s Gardens in so-called auxiliary nursing care, which would include licenced practical nurses and health care aides.
Non-nursing workers (such as kitchen staff, servers, housekeepers, and custodians) employed by Shepherd’s Care are already unionized by Local 987 of the Teamsters.
To apply for union certification in Alberta, applicants must demonstrate support from 40% of the workers who would fall under this bargaining unit. In this case, that would be 22 workers.
Should the ALRB approve this application, they will hold a certification vote, and workers will be able to democratically choose whether to unionize with AUPE.
Assuming those 22 workers all follow through and vote in favour of unionizing, they would need to convince just 4 more of their fellow workers to vote with them to win.
If a majority of workers choose unionization, one of their first items of business will be to form a bargaining committee and begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included last week’s report below, for your convenience.
