Earlier this week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees posted an update on their website regarding contract negotiations for workers employed by the University of Lethbridge.
AUPE represents over 500 non-academic workers at the U of L, including caretakers, lifeguards, groundskeepers, maintenance workers, administrative support, IT workers, library workers, and various technicians, analysts, and specialists.
These workers have been working off an expired collective agreement for nearly 2 years, since June 2024.
Negotiations on the new contract began a month after the expiration, in July 2024, despite the U of L receiving notice from the workers at the beginning of April 2024 that they wanted to begin bargaining.
The two parties signed off on over 20 non-monetary items back in the summer of 2024, which are usually easier to negotiate, so parties typically take care of them first.
As far as monetary items go, the University of Lethbridge refused to propose any. They claimed at the time that they normally want to finish all the non-monetary negotiations first.
It took the university nearly a year until they tabled their monetary offer. In May 2025, they told the bargaining team representing the workers that they were prepared to offer 10% over 4 years.
| Year 1 | 3.00% |
| Year 2 | 3.00% |
| Year 3 | 2.00% |
| Year 4 | 2.00% |
| 10.00% |
That is despite the fact that public sector collective agreements across Alberta were increasingly being ratified with 12% over 4 years.
And it was a long ways off from the 26.05% over 3 years that the workers wanted back in 2024.
The bargaining team—which includes a library technical specialist, an academic advisor, an admissions specialist, a power engineer, and an electrician—asked for 13% in the first year, 6.5% in the second, and 6.55% in the final year..
That might seem a lot, but keep in mind that since 2017, they have received only a 3.8% increase, while inflation passed the 24% mark, leaving them with a cut to real wages of 20.6%.
| 2017 | 0.00% |
| 2018 | 0.00% |
| 2019 | 1.00% |
| 2020 | 0.00% |
| 2021 | 0.00% |
| 2022 | 0.00% |
| 2023 | 3.80% |
| 2024 | 0.00% |
A 26.05% increase would eliminate that 20.6% real wage gap, leaving 5.45% to cover inflation in the final two years of the agreement. That seems pretty reasonable.
Offering 10% to cover a real wage gap that is more than double that is insulting, especially when we consider that the 10% is spread out over 4 years, which means 4 more years of inflation to widen that gap even more.
Even a wage increase of 12% falls short.
Despite that, 12% is exactly what the workers’ bargaining team offered this past February in mediated negotiations. They were willing to cut their original offer by more than 14 points, yet according to yesterday’s update, the employer has refused to move from their pathetic offer of just 10%.
This is not bargaining in good faith.
The workers’ bargaining team also proposed additional wage improvements to help mitigate the harm of the massive concessions they were willing to make on the base increases.
They wanted to adjust the wage grid in a way that would benefit many members, for example, and they wanted an additional 2% wage increase for workers who had been with the University of Lethbridge for at least 20 years of continuous service.
(That last one would have included me 5 years from now, assuming that the U of L had not laid me off in 2010 because the provincial government had frozen operational grants.)
According to the workers’s bargaining team, the negotiators for the university said at their 17 April meeting that “they needed more time to consult with their principals before responding to our proposals”.
The workers’ bargaining team assumes this means they need to Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office to sign off on any changes to their initial offer.
Alberta’s NDP created the Provincial Bargaining and Compensation Office (previously called the Public Bargaining Coordination Office) in 2015. They ensure that government funded entities implement government mandates during bargaining.
They used the PBCO during 2017 negotiations, and the UCP willingly kept the office running during the 2020 bargaining season.
Yesterday’s update from the workers’ bargaining team also indicated the University of Lethbridge representatives cancelled the next bargaining dates, which had been scheduled for last week.
Once again, workers are left waiting on the employer and the province. And the 2-year mark inches ever closer.
Speaking of their expired collective agreement, it was ratified in December 2022, more than 2.5 years after the one before that had expired.
The University of Lethbridge does not have a habit of ratifying new collective agreements before the previous ones have expired, especially when the workers are demanding substantial improvements to their material conditions.
Delaying contract negotiations is a common tactic among employers, as it makes workers more desperate to accept whatever offer is given to them. It is a way to undermine worker solidarity, and it is abhorrent.
