Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the August 2024 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. Last month, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 28 private sector and 9 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 2,361 and 1,857 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about a dozen workers employed by Chemtrade at their customer service centre in Fort Saskatchewan.
Chemtrade workers around the world produce sulphur and water chemical and electrochemical products for use in various industries, including water treatment, agriculture, pulp and paper, oil refining, and food production.
The Fort Saskatchewan location where these workers are employed provides customer service for the storage and distribution of sulphuric acid.
The workers are represented by Local 530A of Unifor and include all workers at the customer service centre except inspectors, office staff, sales staff, security guards, and managers.
Their previous contract expired this past April, and their new contract was just settled a couple of months later, in June.
According to the bargaining update, the full contract isn’t available, so I’m unable to comprehensively compare this new contract with the previous one.
However, Mediation Services did provide details on wage increases.
| 5 Apr 2024 | 3.50% |
| 15 Jan 2025 | 3.00% |
| 15 Jan 2026 | 3.00% |
This is a combined increase of 9.5%—or 9.8% if you account for cumulative increases—over the life of the contract. That’s an annual average increase of 3.17% (3.27%).
Compare that to the wage increases they received in their previous contract, which had gone to arbitration.
| 4 April 2019 | 2.75% |
| 4 April 2020 | 3.00% |
| 4 April 2021 | 3.00% |
| 4 April 2022 | 3.50% |
| 4 April 2023 | 3.50% |
So, that’s 15.75% over a 5-year period, or about 3.15% per year, on average, so pretty close to what they got in the new agreement.
2 replies on “Fort Saskatchewan workers get 9.5% raise”
[…] They include all production and maintenance workers at the location. Customer service workers employed by Chemtrade in Sherwood Park, who are also represented by the same union, ratified their latest contract last year. […]
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