Lethbridge transit workers get 11.5% raise in new contract

Someone recently sent me a copy of the new collective agreement for transit workers employed by the City of Lethbridge, so I thought I’d compare it to the previous contract.

These workers are represented by Local 987 of the Amalgamated Transit Union and include office workers, bus drivers, and maintenance workers.

This new collective agreement does not include drivers with Access-A-Ride, Lethbridge’s paratransit service, who are on a separate contract but also represented by Local 987.

The previous contract for these bus drivers expired at the end of 2022, and the new contract was settled last autumn.

First, here’s a look at the wage increases for these drivers.

1 January 2023	3.00%
1 January 2024	2.75%
1 January 2025	2.50%
1 January 2026	2.75%

That’s a combined 11% over the life of the 4-year contract, or 11.46% if you account for compounding increases. That’s an average of 2.87% per year.

This is much better than the raises they received in their previous contract.

1 January 2019	1.00%
1 January 2020	1.50%
1 January 2021	1.50%
1 January 2022	2.00%

That’s a 6% (6.13%) increase—1.53% per year, on average—a little more than half of the increase these workers got in their new contract.

We also need to keep both increases in context.

For example, in January 2018, the consumer price index in Alberta was 138.9, but it had jumped to 152.8 four years later, in January 2022. That’s an increase of 13.9 points, or 10.01%.

So, while the workers received a combined wage increase of 6.13%, inflation increased 10.01%, leaving these workers with a cut to their real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 3.88%.

That means that coming into their new contract, these workers will end up with a net combined increase of 7.58%, not 11.46%.

Remember, that’s accounting for inflation up to just January 2022. In the two years since then (as of January 2024), inflation increased by another 8.57%.

As a result, these workers have already used up their combined increase, and we still have inflation this year, next year, and 2026 to go. By the end of the contract, these workers will once again find themselves with a cut to their real wages.

So far in 2024 (up to September), inflation has already increased by 1.99%.

The City of Lethbridge could’ve done more.

Here are some highlights of other changes in the new contract.

New to the contract are the following clauses:

7.03 The Employer agrees to facilitate employee access to a daily breakdown of employee daily timecoding along with bi-weekly paystubs.

9.04 (c) The Employer shall post the overtime list and a list of assigned overtime in an accessible location for all employees to view.

9.10 (a) An Operator who has a signed shift (not spareboard) with less than eight (8) hours of work shall be paid at overtime rates for all work performed in excess of the time of their signed scheduled shift.

13.04 (a) When an employee has previously signed up for a vacation period and does not have sufficient vacation credits to cover the signed weeks, the employee will have the ability to take the signed weeks as an unpaid Leave of Absence or use banked time.

Under the previous contract, workers wanting banked time off had to request it at least 3 days in advance. That has been pushed back to 7 days, and the employer must provide a response no later than 5 days in advance, something that was missing from the old contract. Plus, workers can’t request banked time off any sooner than 45 days prior.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation has been added to the list of statutory holidays.

The following clause has been changed:

13.05 (b) All employees who are required to attend medical or dental appointments out of town during their working hours shall be allowed to meet such appointment and suffer no loss of pay.

In the new agreement, it reads:

13.04 (b) All employees who are required to attend medical or dental appointments out of town during their working hours shall be allowed to meet such appointment and suffer no loss of pay for up to one (1) full day, on the condition that the Employee make all reasonable efforts to minimize the time missed.

The section covering maternity, parental, and adoption leave has been completely cut, being replaced with this statement:

19.01 Maternity, Parental and Adoption Leave shall be provided pursuant to the requirements of the Employment Standards Cade, as amended from time to time. However, at no time will entitlements to these leaves be less than what they were in the Employment Standards Code in effect at the date of the commencement of this agreement (January 1, 2023).

Under the previous agreement, bus drivers scheduled for a charter or were required to drive a bus out of the garage of additional assignments were paid for an extra 15 minutes of work. This time was for performing safety checks and driving the bus to the next location. That’s been increased to 20 minutes in the new contract. As well, driver will receive another 15 minutes of pay to travel to a start location of an additional shift assignment.

Also in the previous agreement, drivers were paid an extra 10 minutes to return to the Transit building “from a designated mini-terminal at the conclusion of a shift”. That’s been increased to 15 minutes for all transit stations except the North Terminal Station, which remains at 10 minutes, and the downtown terminal.

Dispatch coordinators will now get the same shift premiums ($1.50 per hour) as transit operations coordinators.