Stettler care home proposes 2.5% raise for workers

Earlier this week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website regarding negotiations for workers in Stettler.

The roughly 100 workers are employed at a supportive living facility in the community of about 5,700 people. Points West Living, which runs the facility, is based out of Edmonton and operates continuing care facilities in 11 communities throughout Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.

The workers at the PWL facility in Stettler have been waiting for a new employment contract since their previous one expired in May. They include licensed practical nurses, certified health care aides, kitchen workers, housekeeping workers, recreation coordinators, maintenance workers, hospitality aides, and so on.

According to AUPE’s update, their bargaining team met with PWL on 7 December to discuss the employer’s recent proposal.

The company wants to switch from a 3-year contract to a 2-year contract, with wages increasing by 1.25% this year and 1.25% next year, for a total of 2.5%.

This is an improvement over the 1.5% the workers got in their last agreement, but it’s still insufficient.

Let me show you what I mean.

First, let’s take a look at what wage increases looked like in their previous contract, which was 4 years long (seems as though each contract gets shorter and shorter) and took effect in May 2016

May 2016	0.75%
May 2017	0.75%
November 2017	0.75%
May 2018	0.75%
January 2019	1.00%
July 2019	1.00%
January 2020	0.50%

That’s a combined 5.5%. Now, let’s look at the most recent contract:

May 2020	0.00%
May 2021	0.50%
May 2022	1.00%

As I mentioned earlier, this comes to 1.5% in total. We add up the two contracts, we see a combined increase of 7.0%. However, to be fair, these percentage increases are cumulative, which means the 0.75% increase in 2017 is not only on top of the 2015 wage, but the 0.75% increases received in 2016.

This means that these workers have received an actual cumulative increase of 7.22%. Remember that number.

In May 2015, the consumer price index in Alberta was 133.6. By May 2022, it had risen to 159.2. That increase of 25.6 in the consumer price index was a 19.16% jump.

In other words, inflation during the last two contracts was 19.16%. So, they’re cumulative raise of 7.22% wasn}t even enough to cover inflation over the last 7 years. Heck, it’s not even enough to cover half of inflation.

And since inflation was higher than the wage increases, this means these health care workers saw a cut to their real wages, which are wages adjusted for inflation.

If wages increased by 7.22% but inflation increased by 19.16%, this means that workers saw a cut of 11.94% to their real wages. In other words, their wages are worth nearly 12% less now than they were in 2015, despite having received an increase in wages of over 7%.

Let’s put this another way. Every $100 in purchasing power these workers held in 2015 is not worth just $88.06. They can either buy only $88.06 worth of goods that they used to spend $100 on, or they have to spend $111.94 to buy all of the same goods they could buy in 2015 for $100.

And if they’re nearly 12% behind in wages, there is no way an increase of 2.5% is going to help them catch up. And that’s not even counting the inflation between May 2022 and May 2025.

Inflation in Alberta between May 2022 and May 2023 was 3.08%, for example. This proposed wage increase isn’t even enough to cover inflation in the first year of the contract, let alone help them recover from a huge cut to real wages.

To be fair, the employer also proposed increases to shift premiums:

	Current	Proposed
Evening	$3.00	$3.12
Night	$4.00	$4.16
Weekend	$2.50	$2.60

That being said, compare these shift premium increases to those in the last two contracts

	Previous contract	Last contract	Proposed
Evening	40¢	25¢	12¢
Night	25¢	50¢	16¢
Weekend	50¢	0¢	10¢

Every one of the proposed increases are smaller than the increases seen two contracts ago, and two of them are smaller than what was received in the most recent contract, and that’s despite skyrocketing inflation last year.

Finally, Points West Living has proposed increasing the health spending account by $100 a year, from $450 to $550.

AUPE has responded to these proposals, calling them “inadequate” and claiming that “a significant gap remains”. In response to these inadequate proposals, the union has “made some minor changes”; although they left those changes unspecified.

The union said they are prepared to go to informal mediation if the employer refuses to make “substantial progress” on these proposals.

Although, I’m not sure what “substantial progress” looks like if AUPE has responded with only “some minor changes”.

Either way, I have my doubts that the employer will respond with increases that will help the workers recover from what will amount to a huge cut to real wages over nearly a decade.

Hopefully, the union has demanded such from the employer. We’ll have to wait until the tentative (or mediated) agreement is made public to know for sure.