Back in September, I wrote an article about how municipal workers employed by the City of Lethbridge were still waiting on a new contract.
The 860 municipal workers had been waiting since December 2022 for a new collective agreement. That’s when their previous agreement expired.
That means that these nearly 900 workers have had their wages frozen since January 2022, the last time they got a raise, which was before inflation skyrocketed the following summer.
Shortly after the story was published, a representative from Local 70 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents the workers, emailed The Alberta Worker, to provide an update on negotiations.
Bargaining had been referred to mediation, as I originally reported, which was set to begin at the end of August; however, the lead negotiator for the City of Lethbridge left before then.
However, negotiations had resumed toward the end of September for library workers and for the broader municipal workers during the second week of October.
On 24 October, a Local 70 representative had reached out to me to let me know that the two parties had reached an agreement, but was unable to provide more details until their membership were informed.
Earlier this week, I was able to receive a summary of changes to the collective agreement, but not the agreement itself.
Notably, these workers are to receive significant wage increases during their new 4-year contract.
| Labourers | Everyone else | |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 3.00% | 3.00% |
| 2024 | 2.75% | 2.75% |
| 2025 | increase to $23.00 | 2.50% |
| 2026 | 2.75% | 2.75% |
That’s a combined increase of 11% for most workers, for an average of 2.75% per year.
Speaking of wages, here are the increases they received in their previous agreements:
| 1 January 2019 | 1.00% |
| 1 January 2020 | 1.50% |
| 1 January 2021 | 1.50% |
| 1 January 2022 | 2.00% |
That’s a combined increase of 6%, or 6.13% if you include cumulative increases. This works out to 1.5% (1.53%) per year, on average.
During that same period, the consumer price index in Alberta increased from 138.9 in January 2018 to 152.8, a jump of 13.9 points, or 10.01%.
And since inflation was 10.01% during the same period that these workers received a wage increase of just 6% (6.13%), it means these workers had a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—4.01% (3.88%).
So, this new 11% increase will end up being 6.99% once it makes up for lost real wages in the previous contract. And it’s unlikely that inflation during the life of this contract will be under 7%.
For example, inflation between January 2022 (the last time they received a wage increase) and September 2024 (the latest data available), inflation in Alberta has increased by 10.73%.
That means that these workers are already behind inflation by 3.74%, even with these new wages, and we still have over two years to go in this contract.
That being said, 11% is a lot better than the 2.75% other public sector workers in Alberta got in their last contract and 7.5% they’re getting in their new contracts.
So, I guess it could be worse.
Here are some highlights of other changes in the new contract, which expires at the end of 2026.
Heritage Day and the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation have been added to the list of paid holidays, bringing up the total number of paid holidays to 13.
Parental leave has been changed to be in line with the Employment Standards Code, rather than have leave amounts specific to these workplaces.
Bereavement leave has increased from 3 days to 5 days and will apply to only spouses (including common law), children, parents, siblings, legal guardians, grandchildren, grandparents, and wards. These include step and in-law relations.
The employer will provide laundry facilities at the airport for contaminated work clothes. Previously, the airport wasn’t included in the list of locations with laundry facilities for this purpose.
