Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their second new applications report for April 2026, covering the period from 13–21 April.
In the report was an application for union certification.
Local 530-A of Unifor filed the application on 14 April on behalf of workers employed by Dow Chemical Canada ULC.
Based out of Calgary, Dow Canada specializes in chemical and plastic manufacturing. They have manufacturing facilities in Alberta and Ontario.
According to the application summary provided by the ALRB in their report, Local 530-A would like to represent all of Dow Canada’s workers at their facility in Fort Saskatchewan. However, it would not include those in maintenance, office, clerical, sales, technical, laboratory, health, or safety and environment positions.
This would amount to 178 workers, which produce packaging and specialty products at the Fort Saskatchewan facility.
To apply for union certification in Alberta, a union must demonstrate support from at least 40% of the workers who would be covered by the proposed bargaining unit.
In this case, that would work out to 72 workers.
The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow (28th), during which time, representatives from Horizon can present arguments, if they have any, as to why these workers should be unable to unionize with Local 530-A.
Regan Dvernichuk is the only listed in the application summary as an employer representative. According to one LinkedIn profile with the same name, she appears to be the senior director of technical expertise and support for Dow Canada’s Alberta operations.
Should the ALRB approve the certification application, they will conduce a certification vote, which will give all 178 workers the chance to democratically choose whether to unionize with Local 530-A.
Assuming all 72 workers who showed initial support follow through and vote in favour of unionizing, they would need to convince 18 more of their fellow workers to vote with them in order to win.
Should the workers win their unionization drive, one of their first orders of business will be to elect their bargaining committee, so they can begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of last week’s report below.
