Last year, I wrote an article regarding contract negotiations between Emcon Services and their road maintenance workers.
Emcon is the largest road maintenance contractor in Canada, and they are responsible for maintaining 40% of Alberta’s highway network, which includes about 12,000 lane kilometres of highways in the Athabasca, Stony Plain, Fort McMurray, Vermillion, and Hanna districts.
The last collective agreement for these workers, who are unionized with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, expired at the end of October 2024.
That agreement wasn’t ratified until July 2022, nearly 3 years after the previous one expired in October 2019, so it wouldn’t be surprising if this employer is dragging out negotiations again, given that it’s been over 6 months and they still don’t have a new contract.
This past October, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website regarding negotiations for these workers.
One of the things they were asking for was a 26% raise over 3 years, half of which would be retroactive to November 2024, the start of what they hope will be a new 3-year contract, even though their last contract was 5 years long.
The employer responded 2 months later with an proposal of just 5.1%, way below inflation (not including making up for below-inflation increases in the last contract).
Not only did they present an offensive offer, they seem to have been undermining the workers’ bargaining team’s efforts to negotiate this contract.
According to the latest new applications report from the Alberta Labour Relations Board, the AUPE filed an application with the board on 14 May 2025 regarding this.
The summary provided by the ALRB in the report states that the AUPE alleges that the employer sent a memo to the workers that claimed the “monetary position” of the workers’ bargaining team was “jeopardizing” their ability to bid on the renewal of the contracts it has with the provincial government to maintain roadways in 5 eastern contract maintenance areas in eastern Alberta.
It also claimed that this would jeopardize the job security of the workers, which reads a lot like a threat.
According to the report’s summary, AUPE claims that the action violates section 148.1.a of Alberta’s Labour Relations Code.
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall participate in or interfere with the formation or administration of a trade union, or the representation of employees by a trade union
Because the ALRB doesn’t archive their new applications reports, I’ve included a copy of this week’s report below, for your convenience.
