Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for long-term care workers in Lethbridge.
AUPE represents over 120 workers employed at Legacy Lodge, a 104-unit continuing care facility in North Lethbridge. These workers fill a variety of roles, including licensed practical nurses, health care aides, food service assistants, cooks, administrative assistants, and housekeepers.
Legacy Lodge is owned by Choices in Community Living Inc, which is based out of Edmonton. They also have a lodge in Red Deer: WestPark Lodge.
The workers have been without a new collective agreement for over 2 years, ever since their previous agreement expired in March 2024.
Choices in Community Living have been dragging their feet on bargaining. In fact, they wanted to go into formal mediation only 6 months after the last contract had expired—right after the workers”s bargaining team tabled their monetary proposals, including wage increases—rather than bargain in good faith with their workers.
According to last week’s update, the worker’s bargaining team met again with the employer last month.
The negotiating team for Choices in Community Living proposed a 4-year deal at that meeting; however, it included only wage freezes in the first two years of the half-completed contract. They did offer a lump sum payment for 2025, but lump sum payments do not increase the base salary, which is what future raises are based on.
For example, if you make $40,000 a year and your employer gives you a $1,000 lump sum payment one year and a 2% wage increase the following year, that 2% increase will be based on $40,000, not $41,000.
Offering wage increases only after contracts are ratified is a tactic employers use to drag out bargaining. After all, it is cheaper for them to pay wage increases on 2 years than it is on 4 years.
The employer claims they have been struggling to hire health care aides. As a solution, they created a new job classification called comfort care aide. These workers are paid less than what health care aides make even though they perform 87% of the duties of health care aides.
Well, I wonder if maybe the reason they cannot find health care aides is because they want the labour of a health care aide but do not want to pay the wage of a health care aide.
The starting wage for health care aides at the end of the previous agreement was just $21.64 an hour, which is about $45,000 gross salary per year.
That is less than Lethbridge’s living wage of $22.30. Remember, a living wage is the hourly wage a worker needs just to cover their basic expenses and participate in their community.
As well, the employer said in negotiations last month that they are unwilling to increase vacation time because they already struggle to cover shifts when workers are on sick leave.
In other words, because they are not willing to hire more workers, their existing workers cannot have more vacation time, which would allow them to recuperate from a physically and mentally draining job.
At one point in negotiations, according to the workers’ bargaining team, the employer’s negotiators swore at the workers’ bargaining team—which I remind the reader, include 3 workers employed at Legacy Lodge—and told them to leave.
These negotiations do not seem to be headed to a resolution anytime soon.
