Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board released their first new applications report for December 2025. In it was an application certification.
Local 1-207 of the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, otherwise known as the United Steelworkers or just USW, filed the application on 24 November 2024.
According to the application summary provided by the ALRB, the USW is filing to represent all the workers employed in the public works and municipal services departments of the Town of Vegreville.
This would amount to about 20 workers.
To apply for certification of a bargaining unit, a union must demonstrate support from at least 40% of the workers in the proposed unit. In this case, that would be 9 workers.
If the ALRB approves the application, they will conduct a certification vote, during which time the workers will democratically choose whether to unionize with USW.
Assuming the theoretical 9 workers (it could have been more) follow through and vote in favour of unionizing with USW, they would need to convince just 2 of their fellow workers to join them. This would give them the majority they would need to win.
The ALRB has scheduled a hearing for this application for this morning. During the hearing, representatives from the Town of Vegreville will have a chance to present arguments, if they have any, against this certification.
Should a majority of workers vote to unionize with USW and the ALRB awards these workers with a certificate, one of their first tasks will be to form a bargaining committee to begin negotiating their first contract with the Town of Vegreville.
Since the ALRB does not archive their new applicaions reports, I have included a copy below for last week’s application.
