Last week, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the June 2025 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In June, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 29 private sector and 18 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 12,522 and 2,253 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about 40 workers employed by Veolia Waste Services Alberta.
Based out of Ontario, Veolia specializes in waste management and have operations throughout Canada. In this case, they manage the materials recycling facility for the City of Edmonton, which used to be operated by Suez Canada Waste Services.
Local 362 of the Teamsters represents this group of workers employed at the recycling facility.
Their previous contract expired this past March. Their new contract was ratified a little over a month after the last one expired and will run until March 2028. This is the first new collective agreement for these workers since the change in the operating employer.
The workers are set to receive wage increases in each year of the new contract.
| 1 April 2025 | 4.25% |
| 1 April 2026 | 2.50% |
| 1 April 2027 | 2.50% |
This will result in a combined increase of 9.25% over the life of the collective agreement, or 9.53% if you account for compound increases. That averages out to 3.08% (3.18%) per year.
That is better than the 4%, 2%, and 1.5% they received in their previous contract.
With these new increases, all workers will make above $20 an hour.
Here are some highlights of other things that have changed in this new contract.
The following clause has changed from this:
Temporary Employees will not be used while the Company has Regular Full-time Employees covered by this Agreement working in any department and who are qualified, available, and who have not completed 40 hours of work in that week, and desire such work.
to this:
Temporary Agency Employees will not be used while the Company has Regular Full-time Employees covered by this Agreement working in any department and who are qualified, available, and desire such work.
There is a new premium of $1 per hour for screen cleaners.
There is a new entry on overtime in the article on seniority. Overtime will now be offered in order of seniority. If no one accepts the overtime, the employer will assign it to the worker with the least seniority. As well, workers cannot work more than 2 hours of overtime in conjunction with their regular shift. Those who work 10 hours of overtime in a week won’t be required to perform any more overtime that week.
Under the previous collective agreement, workers received a $175 voucher each year that they could use to get work boots. They still get a voucher, but the amount of that voucher is no longer specified in the new agreement.
Bereavement leave has been reduced from 5 days to just 3 days.
National Truth and Reconciliation Day has been added to the holidays list, which is used to determine stat pay.
Sick leave has been renamed sick/personal leave, but it remains at 6 days. Any personal days must now be approved by the employer in advance.
