Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their latest new applications report. In it was an application for union certification.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed the application on 9 October 2025 on behalf of workers employed by Extendicare (Canada).
According to ALRB’s summary, this application is specifically for 57 workers employed by Extendicare at their Eaux Claires location in northwest Edmonton.
This facility offers 24/7 care for people with complex, unpredictable medical needs.
The workers would be those working in general support services, such as kitchen, laundry, maintenance, and administrative positions.
AUPE already represents roughly 250 workers in so-called “auxiliary nursing care” at the Eaux Claires facility, such licensed practical nurses, health care aides, and recreation aides.
These workers have been without a new collective agreement since their last one expired almost 2 years ago, at the end of 2023.
To apply the certification of a bargaining unit, a union must demonstrate that they have support from at least 40% of the workers would be covered by the proposed bargaining unit. In this case, that would be 23 workers.
The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this application, which will occur next Friday (24th). Extendicare will have an opportunity during this meeting to present arguments, if they have any, as to why these workers should not be able to unionize with AUPE.
Should the ALRB approve the application, they will hold a certification vote, during which the workers will be able to vote on whether to unionize.
Assuming the 23 workers who originally supported unionization follow through and vote in favour of joining AUPE, they would need to convince just 6 more of their fellow workers for the vote to be successful.
If the workers end up unionizing, the first thing they will need to do is organizing a bargaining committee to begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Since the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of this new applications report below.
Update (28 November 2025): A majority of these workers voted in favour of unionizing with AUPE.
