Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board released their first applications report of 2026. In it was an application for a strike vote.
The NAIT Academic Staff Association filed the application on 23 December 2025 on behalf of the nearly 1,300 academic workers employed by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
These workers include curriculum and instructional specialists, librarians, counsellors, and academic instructors.
According to the province’s collective bargaining agreement database, the most recent agreement for these workers expired over a year and a half ago, in June 2024.
In a statement published on their website last month, NASA claimed that they had been bargaining for 16 months and had already been through 12 days of mediation session.
Despite this, NAIT still has not been able to make concessions sufficient enough for the bargaining team to bring back to the workers to vote on.
As a result, the workers’ bargaining team has bowed out of mediations, yet are still “committed to reaching a fair agreement through negotiations”.
The bargaining team claimed that had they conceded to NAIT’s demands, it would have resulted in the following permanent losses to NASA workers:
- Weakened benefit protections
- Increased workload pressures without safeguards
- Continued exclusion of ESL instructors
- Threats to academic work through IP and AI issues
- Erosion of long-term salary growth across classifications
In town halls held last month, the bargaining committee explained the situation to over 350 NASA workers and received input from them. According to the bargaining team’s update last month, town hall attendees “expect an agreement that protects your work and your future”.
Feedback from those town halls and the experiences trying to negotiate in bargaining sessions and in mediation is what prompted NASA to apply for an ALRB-supervised vote, which they hope, if it is approved, will occur next week.
The bargaining team has been holding additional town halls this week in anticipation of a possible strike vote, to provide even more information than last month’s town halls, including details on the mediated proposals.
If the ALRB approves the application and a majority of the workers who participate vote to strike, it does not necessarily mean that they will end up striking.
A strike mandate, especially one supported by a large majority of the workers, would show the employer that the workers are willing to withhold their labour to get the proposals they asked for.
The bargaining committee can use that leverage to encourage the employer to move more on their proposals.
“Our members care deeply about NAIT and about their students,” said Shauna MacDonald, President of the NAIT Academic Staff Association. “A strike vote is not something faculty take lightly. It’s a signal that we need real movement to resume bargaining and protect the learning environment students expect and deserve.”
Because the ALRB does not archive their new applications reports, I have included a copy of this week’s report below.
Update (15 January 2026): NASA published on their website the results of the strike vote, which have yet to be verified by the ALRB. According to NASA, 83% of the workers who belong to NASA participated in the strike vote, and of those, 83% voted in favour of striking.
Update (16 January 2026): NAIT has applied to the ALRB for a lockout poll.
