Earlier this month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published their April 2024 Bargaining Update, which includes details on recently settled collective agreements.
One of the agreements was between the Local 1-207 of the United Steelworkers and Weyerhaeuser, a Seattle-based corporation that specializing in timberland ownership and management, wood products, real estate, and energy.
Local 1-207 represents around 135 workers at Weyerhaeuser’s Drayton Valley location, where they operate the softwood sawmill, producing various spruce, pine, and fir wood products.
These workers have been working without a new contract since their previous contract expired in March 2023, over a year ago.
Mediation Services hasn’t made available the full collective agreement, which was settled barely a month ago, on 26 April. However, they have published information on new wage increases.
According to the April 2024 Bargaining Update, these workers are set to get a raise in every year of their new 5-year contract, with 3% in each of the first two years and 2% in each of the last 3 years.
| 4 April 2023 | 3% |
| 2 April 2024 | 3% |
| 4 April 2025 | 2% |
| 31 March 2026 | 2% |
| 30 March 2027 | 2% |
That works out to a combined 12%—well, 12.58% if you account for compounding increases—over the life of the contract, which is an average of 2.4% per year.
This is slightly more than the 11% they received in their previous contract: 2.5%, 2%, 2%, 2%, and 2.5%.
And while 12% and 11% might seem pretty decent, there’s something to keep in mind.
In April 2017, the last time these workers received a raise prior to the previous contract, Alberta’s consumer price index sat at 137.4 and had increased to 163.7 over the next 5 years, in April 2023. That’s an increase of 19.14%.
So, while an 11% increase was pretty decent in raw numbers, inflation during the last contract increased to 19.14% during the same period.
That means real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—actually decreased by about 8%. Even if account for compound increases, the 11.5% barely makes a difference.
In other words, these workers were coming into negotiations between 7% and 8% behind inflation. That means that their new raise of 12.58% will end up being only about 5%.
And that’s assuming inflation won’t rise during the 5 years of the new contract. But during the first year of the contract—April 2023 to April 2024—inflation rose by 2.99%. They’ve already used up more than half of their new raise in just the first year of their contract, when accounting for real wages.
Weyerhaeuser should have offered their workers more.
Local 1-207 has also been trying to unionize workers at Weyerhaeuser’s facility in Grande Prairie, which the company has been opposing.
