Earlier this week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published their second new applications report of August 2026, which includes summaries of all applications they received between 2 August and 9 August 2026.
One of the applications was for union certification.
Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed the application on 5 August 2026 on behalf of workers employed by Arch Services Ltd.
Arch Services provides staffing services for Christenson Communities, a division of Christenson Group of Companies, which operates the division as an “asset management company” that oversees over 1,500 homes in 10 luxury retirement communities in cities and towns near Edmonton and Red Deer.
The 85 or so workers are employed at The Ravines at Park Avenue, a continuing care complex located in Rocky Mountain House.
The application was for “all employees” at the facility, which could include health care workers, such as health care aides and licensed practical nurses.
For a union to file an application certification, they must demonstrate support from at least 40% of the workers in the proposed bargaining unit.
In this case, that would be 13 workers.
Listed in the application as employer representatives are TJ Paigude, community manager at the Timberstone Mews facility, and Karlee Oltmann, a human resources business partner with Christenson.
Should the ALRB approve the application, workers will vote on whether to unionize. Assuming the 13 workers follow through with their initial support and actually vote in favour of unionization, they would need to convince another 3 workers to vote with them.
If these workers vote in favour of unionization, one of their first items of business will be to choose a bargaining committee to begin negotiating their first collective agreement.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of this week’s report below for your convenience.
