During the last round of contract bargaining, many public sector workers in Alberta ratified contracts that included what’s called a “gain sharing” wage increase.
Basically what this means is that if the economy hits a certain threshold, these workers would receive a certain pay increase. That threshold was that the average gross domestic product (GDP) of Alberta between 2003 and 2023 had to be at least 2.7%.
If we met that, then these workers would receive an extra 0.5% increase to their wage increase, often in lieu of any other increases in 2023.
This clause ended up in the contracts of thousands of public sector workers. For example, workers employed by the Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis, Lethbridge College, Portage College, and University of Lethbridge all had it in their contracts. And this is not an exhaustive list.
Well, last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update on their website claiming that the 20-year average for GDP growth in Alberta was around 2.2%.
As a result, all these workers who had this conditional increase included in their contract will lose out on the extra 0.5%.
And considering that most public sector contracts in Alberta have increases below inflation, this will be another blow to workers who are already struggling to put food on their family’s table.
6 replies on “Thousands of Alberta workers lose 0.5% raise”
Public workers didn’t get the raise, and there was nothing from the GOA to let us know that it wouldn’t be there, either.
Of course not. Just let you figure it out on your own. Just one more way they show that they don’t care about workers.
It’s written in the cba. The cba you signed. Did you out read it?
What the 10-year average GDP actually is wasn’t written in the CBA.
Read it, signed it but we also got a really low increase over a 3 year contract here at the UofC. Extra 0.5% is always welcome
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