Last month, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update contract negotiations for workers employed by Lethbridge Polytechnic.
Bargaining with Lethbridge Polytechnic, which was called Lethbridge College prior to a name change in the summer of 2024, for the new contract began in June, just before the last contract expired.
The most recent collective agreement for these more than 350 workers expired in June 2024, but it took nearly two years after the previous one had expired before this one was finally ratified. And now that it has been roughly a year and half for a new one, with no end in sight, we might see something similar this time around.
AUPE members at Lethbridge Polytechnic fill a wide variety of positions, including research assistants, kitchen workers, tech support, caretakers, administrative assistants, cashiers, accounting, lab technicians, communications, and tradesworkers.
According to AUPE, during a bargaining session in October 2024, the employer rejected all monetary proposals put forward by the workers’ bargaining team, including wage increases.
Instead, they want these workers to take a 7.5% wage increase spread out over a 4-year contract.
| 2024 | 2.00% |
| 2025 | 2.00% |
| 2026 | 1.75% |
| 2027 | 1.75% |
That comes to an average of 1.88% per year.
Here’s what these workers had received over the last decade:
| 2013 | 0.00% |
| 2014 | 2.50% |
| 2015 | 2.50% |
| 2016 | 1.90% |
| 2017 | 0.00% |
| 2018 | 0.00% |
| 2019 | 1.00% |
| 2020 | 0.00% |
| 2021 | 0.00% |
| 2022 | 0.00% |
| 2023 | 2.75% |
These workers received 6 years of wage freezes between 2013 and 2023 and a combined 10.65% during that period, which works out to 1.07% per year, on average.
So, this new raise is better than they have received in any of their last 4 contracts. But those 6 wage freezes means wages for these workers have fallen behind inflation during the past decade.
In July 2012, the consumer price index in Alberta was 126.8 but had risen to 166.0 by July 2023, an increase of 39.2 points. That’s a jump of 30.91%.
When you put that together with the 10.65% wage increase the workers received in their last contract, they ended up with a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 20.26% heading into this new round of bargaining.
To put that into perspective, for each $1000 these workers made in July 2012, it would be the same as getting paid $797.40 in July 2023, when accounting for wages and inflation.
In other words, for every $1000 they spent on goods and services in July 2012, it would’ve cost them $1,202.60 to buy the same goods and services last summer. Either that, or they’d be able to afford only $797.40 of those goods and services.
Lethbridge Polytechnic’s proposal of 7.5% isn’t even half of what is needed to address this reduction in real wages. And that’s not even addressing the inflation this year, next year, and in the final two years of the contract.
When the two parties met this past summer, Lethbridge Polytechnic refused to budge at all, stubbornly insisting on remaining at 7.5% over 4 years. They also refused worker proposals for a cost of living adjustment, a living wage, and long-service increases.
Not only that, but most public sector bargaining units have been getting 12% over 4 years when negotiating new collective agreements this year. A 7.5% increase is what public sector workers were getting in 2023 and early 2024.
In their August update, AUPE said they planned to develop essential service agreements in anticipation of entering mediation in the autumn.
Essential service agreements (ESAs) are mandated by the province before mediation can begin. They establish which workers in a bargaining unit are considered essential workers and must continue working during a strike or lockout.
Well, according to last month’s update, Lethbridge Polytechnic seems to have no interest in developing ESAs. They have even gone so far, apparently, as applying for an exemption.
Alberta’s Essential Services Commissioner is supposed to be reading the exemption application today and issue a decision. AUPE predicts that the commissioner will approve Lethbridge Polytechnic’s application.
According to section 95.1 of Alberta’s Labour Relations Code, defines as service as essential if its interruption “would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the public” or if it is “necessary to the maintenance and administration of the rule of law or public security”.
Section 95.21.2 of the labour code states that the commissioner can grant an exemption if the workers “do not perform essential services” or they do “perform essential services [but] those services can be maintained during a strike or lockout by other capable and qualified persons, including replacement workers, who are not employees in the bargaining unit”
If Lethbridge Polytechnic can convince the commissioner that none of the workers covered by this theoretical collective agreement do not perform essential services or that their essential services can be performed by others, including scabs, then indeed the commissioner may approve the exemption.
Should the commissioner grant the exemption, as the bargaining committee for the workers predicts will happen, it would mean that every worker would be able to participate in a strike, if mediation falls through. However, it also means every workers would be affected by a lockout by the employer, which would then be free to hire scabs to do their work, leaving no incentive for Lethbridge Polytechnic to negotiate with the workers. Scan workers rob unionized workers of their collective power.
