Road maintenance company offers 5.1% raise

Yesterday, the Alberta Union of Public Employees published an update on their website regarding contract negotiations with Emcon.

The company is the largest road maintenance contractor in Canada, and they are responsible for maintaining 40% of Alberta’s highway network, which includes about 12,000 lane kilometres of highways Athabasca, Stony Plain, Fort McMurray, Vermillion, and Hanna districts.

According to the collective bargaining agreement database managed by provincial government’s Mediation Services department, the most recent contract between Emcon and the roughly 500 workers they employ expired at the end of October.

Bargaining, however, began only at the beginning of October.

Despite two months of bargaining, Emcon has only come forward with wage proposals this week, and it’s not that impressive.

They’re offering a 1.7% increase in each year of the proposed 3-year agreement. That works out to 5.1% over the life of the contract, 5.19% if you account for compound increases.

That’s disgusting.

These workers got 5.35% in their last contract. So, they’re proposing to give them even less in this new contract.

Never mind the fact that their last contract gave them raises way below the rate of inflation.

The consumer price index in Alberta sat at 140.7 in November 2018, which is the last time they got a raise prior to this most recent contract. By November 2023, it had jumped nearly 25 points to 165.6. That’s a 17.7% increase!

Wages were a tortoise to inflation’s hare. Inflation grew at nearly three times the rate that wages for these workers did!

This left the workers with a cut to real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—of 12.35%! Their wages were effectively slashed by over 12%!

And Emcon thinks a 5.19% increase is going to somehow make up for the crappy raises they got in the last contract.

And remember, that’s factoring in only inflation up to November 2023. Since then, inflation has increased another 2.72%. Even if we ignore the 12.35% in lost wages, the proposed 1.7% wage increase won’t even be enough to cover inflation since their last raise.

What a joke!

Oh, but it gets better.

In October, in a previous bargaining update, AUPE indicated that they had proposed a 26% wage increase over 3 years: 13% right now, then 6.5% next year and 6.5% in the final year.

Somehow, this private sector employer thought that a 5.19% increase is an appropriate response to a 26% proposal (28.17% compounded). That’s a gap of more than 20 points!

How are these workers supposed to catch up to ballooning cost of living as they try to support themselves and their families on subpar wage increases?

Keep in mind that some of these workers were still making under $20 an hour by the end of the last contract.

This employer should come back to the negotiating table next month with a serious offer. They should show these workers some respect.