Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their third new applications report of August 2026, which covers applications they received between 9 August and 16 August.
One of those applications was for union certification. Technically, it was 2 applications.
The United Nurses of Alberta filed both applications on 13 August 2026 for workers employed in Alberta by the Red Deer Primary Care Network.
These workers in the first application, which number about 10, will be all those “employed in direct nursing care or nursing instruction”. Those in the second application are those “employed in auxiliary nursing care”, which are about 5.
Red Deer Primary Care Network is a partnership between family doctors and nurse practitioners and the government agency Primary Care Alberta and supports about 135,000 patients in 20 clinics across Red Deer, Red Deer County, Blackfalds, and Delburne.
While the network facilitates primary care in the region, the workers who will be covered by this proposed bargaining unit are those directly employed by the network for nursing care and instruction.
To file a certification application in Alberta, unions must demonstrate support among at least 40% of the workers who would be covered by the application. In this case, that would be 4 workers for the first application and 2 for the second.
Should the ALRB approve the application, they will hold a certification vote, and all the workers will be able to democratically choose whether to unionize with UNA.
Assuming all 6 of the workers I mentioned above follow through with their intention and vote in favour of unionizing, they would need to convince just 2 others and 1 other, respectively, to join them.
If the workers vote in favour of unionizing, one of their first orders of business will be to organize bargaining committees so they can begin negotiating their first collective agreements—or agreement, should they end up under the same agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of last week’s report below for your convenience.
