Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the June 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. Last month, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 30 private sector and 11 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,728 and 1,181 workers respectively.
One of those settlements was between Celanese EVA Performance Polymers and Local 21A of Unifor.
These workers had been without a new contract for over a year, since their previous one expired in January 2023. Both Celanese and the workers approved this new contract back in April.
Based out of Texas, Celanese also has locations in Canada, including one in Edmonton, where workers produce ethylene vinyl acetate, which is used in solar applications, wires and cables, food packaging, medical devices, and drug delivery solutions
The company recently expanded production capacity at this facility, which has increased their workforce from 92 when the company settled their previous collective agreement in 2019 to 103 last month.
Mediation Services hasn’t yet published the full version of the new contract, so I can’t provide a comprehensive comparison of the two contract.
But they did provide the wage increases for the new 3-year contract.
| 23 Jan 2023 | 5.0% |
| 24 Jan 2024 | 3.5% |
| 24 Jan 2025 | 3.5% |
That’s a combined 12%, or an annual average of 4.0%.
Their previous contract gave them 13.75% over 4 years, or 3.44% per year, so this raise is definitely an improvement over their previous contract.
In January 2022, the last month these workers received a raise under their previous contract, the consumer price index in Alberta was 152.8. Two years later, this past January, CPI was at 165.9. That’s an increase of 13.1, or 8.57%.
That means that the raise in their first two years of the contract at 8.5% is just shy of covering the inflation during the same period. As long as inflation is less than 3.5% between now and the beginning of 2026, these workers should be able to keep up with inflation.
