Last month, Alberta Labour Relations updated their online collective bargaining agreements database. One of the new agreements they added to it was for factory workers in Edmonton.
These 420 workers are employed by Maple Leaf Foods at their 96,000 square foot facility in Edmonton. At this factory, the workers butcher about 75,000 chickens every day.
Their last contract expired at the end of July 2023. Back then, they were with the company union Christian Labour Association of Canada. The following month, however, they chose to leave CLAC and join Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.
This is their first contract with the UFCW. Well, sort of, they were with UFCW Local 1118 before switching to CLAC in 2017.
In their last contract, these workers received a 4.54% wage increase in August 2020, 1.71% in August 2021, and 1.68% in August 2022.
Their new 3-year contract, which took effect last month gives the workers a 50¢ per hour increase as of February 2024, 60¢ in February 2025, and 60¢ in February 2026. That works out to 2.01%, 2.36%, and 2.31%, respectively.
The new union did not manage to get a wage increase for 2023.
Here’s a breakdown of the increases for both contracts.
| August 2020 | 4.54% |
| August 2021 | 1.71% |
| August 2022 | 1.68% |
| August 2023 | 0.00% |
| February 2024 | 2.01% |
| February 2025 | 2.36% |
| February 2026 | 2.31% |
That’s a combined 14.61%, or 15.49% if you account for compound increases. That’s an average of 2.21% per year.
In August 2019, Alberta’s consumer price index was 143.4. This past January, it had reached 165.9. That’s an increase of 22.5, or 15.69%.
So, even though the increases these workers managed to negotiate with Maple Leaf were higher than what they got under CLAC in 2021, 2022, and last year, it isn’t enough to make up for the jump in inflation.
And remember, the 15.49% wage increases they’re getting over this 7-year period include increases last month, next year, and in 2026. Inflation, however, goes up to only this past January. We still don’t know what inflation was like last month, nor what it will be over the next two years. Suffice it to say, that by the end of the contract, these workers will be further behind inflation than they are now.
Alberta Labour Relations provided only wage increases when they updated their database, so I was unable to compare other aspects of the two contracts (such as leave, overtime, and benefits).
