Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published the January 2025 Bargaining Update.
This monthly report provides information about the unionized workforce, primarily in Alberta. In January, Mediation Services received settlement information regarding 28 private sector and 11 public sector bargaining settlements, covering 4,351 and 944 workers respectively.
Among those settlements was a contract for about 20 workers employed by the County of Newell in their public works department.
The workers in this collective agreement include truck drivers, maintenance operators, mechanics, grader operators, and labourers. They’re unionized Local 1032 of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, which also represents workers employed by the City of Brooks.
The previous contract for these workers expired in December 2024. The new contract was settled in November 2024; although Mediation Services only recently received their copy. Why can’t more employers be like that, settling contracts before they expire?
The new collective agreement is for 4 years expiring in January 2026.
The workers are set to receive wage increases in every year of their new contract.
| 2025 | 7.90% |
| 2026 | 2.00% |
| 2027 | 2.00% |
| 2028 | 2.00% |
This combined increase works out to 13.9%, which is an annual average increase of 3.48%.
The last contract for these workers gave them a 4.61% increase over 4 years, including a wage freeze in the first year of that contract.
Over the life of their previous contract, inflation in Alberta increased by 17.2%, leaving these workers with a cut to real wages of 12.59%.
This new increase of 13.9% will definitely make up for that, but keep in mind that it’s over 4 years, and inflation will increase again during the same period, so these workers will likely still be behind inflation.
Here are some changes between the the new collective agreement and their previous one.
A new definition was added to indicate that any occurrence of the “masculine gender” should also include the “feminine gender”. There was no mention of other genders or those whose gender is nonbinary.
The following article was removed from the contract:
6.03 Upon request of an Executive Member or the CUPE National Representative, the Employer shall provide a list of all Employees home addresses, home phone numbers and/or cellular numbers and personal email addresses.
The section on student work experience was removed from the contract.
The compassionate care leave has been capped at 8 weeks. As well, during compassionate care leave, workers must cover both the employer and employee share of group benefits.
That’s pretty much it.
