Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees published an update regarding contract negotiations for workers employed by the University of Lethbridge.
AUPE represents over 500 non-academic workers at the U of L.
These workers have been working off an expired collective agreement since June 2024.
The bargaining team—which includes a library technical specialist, an academic advisor, an admissions specialist, a power engineer, and an electrician—began negotiations with the U of L’s team in July 2024.
At their next r0und of bargaining later that same month, they proposed a massive wage increase: 26.05% over 3 years. It would start with 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.
On a related note, they also want to bring back cost-of-living adjustments, which would provide lump sum payments in the event that inflation ends up higher than their wage increase for that year.
As well, they want to implement a minimum wage of $22.98 at the U of L for all full-time workers.
The U of L did not share their monetary proposals. In fact, by the time they finished their October bargaining sessions, the university still had not put wage proposals on the table, insisting on finishing negotiations on non-monetary proposals first.
I should mention at this point that these workers never ratified their last collective agreement until nearly 2.5 years had gone by since the previous one expired, leaving only a year and half left in their new contract, after it was finally ratified.
Not wanting a repeat of that, the bargaining team applied for informal mediation in November 2024, and the mediator was supposed to sit in on November’s bargaining sessions. Those meetings were postponed until January to accommodate one of the university’s negotiator’s, who was sick.
It was not until May of this year, nearly a year since negotiations began, that the U of L finally presented their wage offer: 3% in each the first two years and 2% in each of the last two years.
That is 10% over the life of the contract. That is less than half of what the workers are asking for and will definitely not cover lost real wages over the last two contracts.
In last week’s update, the bargaining team mentioned that they told the mediator their were ending informal mediation, since the U of L was refusing to move significantly on their offer.
With informal mediation out of the way, the workers’ bargaining team will focus their attention to completing their essential services agreement, which must be in place before filing for formal mediation.
Formal mediation is the last step before job action.
If formal mediation fails, there will be a mandatory 14-day cooling off period before the workers can strike or before the university can lock them out.
Keep in mind, that the workers have not given the union a strike mandate yet either, so that must happen first as well. Plus, any strike or lockou must be preceded by 72 hours of notice.
But let us wait to see what happens with formal mediation before we get ahead of ourselves.
Update (2 February 2026): According to an update from the workers’ bargaining team, negotiations have moved to formal mediation.
