Starbucks workers in Sherwood Park file for union

Earlier week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board released their most recent New Applications Report. In the report is a new application for union certification in Alberta.

The application was filed on 28 July 2022 by Local 207 of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, also known as United Steelworkers.

USW is applying on behalf of 41 workers at the Starbucks location on Baseline Road in Sherwood Park.

This follows the recent successful union certification for Starbucks workers at the Millrise location in Calgary, who had been organizing with USW.

USW has recently tried to organize workers at all 5 locations in Lethbridge. The ALRB held their vote 3 weeks ago today (on the 15th of July), but they have yet to release the results of that vote. They’ve scheduled a hearing for the Lethbridge application next month, so we may be waiting over a month and half to find out if the Lethbridge workers voted in favour of unionization.

If the votes are in favour for each application and all the unions are certified, it’d mean that Alberta would have 7 unionized Starbucks stores.

BC is the only other province with unionized stores, with the Langley Valley Centre store becoming the province’s third unionized location. There are unionized locations in Surrey and Victoria, as well. All 3 locations are unionized with USW.

The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this application to occur on 12 August 2022.

The second application was also filed the same day, but by Local 855 of Unifor on behalf of 44 workers at the Kaybob South Amalgamated Plant near Fox Creek.

Local 855 currently represents workers with the following employers:

• West Fraser Ltd.’s pulp division in Hinton
• Town of Hinton
• Hinton Wood Products
• Edson Forest Products
• Yellowhead Emergency Shelter

The Kaybob South Amalgamated Plant is a gas processing plant operated by Energy Transfer Canada, a midstream gas producer based out of Calgary. Its parent company, Energy Transfer, is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.

The ALRB scheduled the hearing for this application to occur on the 12th of August.

Since the ALRB doesn’t archive their new application reports, here’s a copy of the most recent one.