Last week, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed a bad faith bargaining complaint with the provincial labour board.
Actually, it was 3 complaints, but they were all related.
AUPE represents workers employed at Walden Heights, a continuing care facility in Calgary managed by AgeCare.
Technically, these workers are employed by Aster Joint Venture Limited Partnership, which is a partnership between AgeCare and Axium Infrastructure, a Montreal-based portfolio investment firm.
This partnership, formed in 2021, shares ownership of 5 of AgeCare’s facilities, and Aster operates 4 of those facilities: Sagewood, Skypointe, Sunrise Gardens, and Walden Heights.
Two of the collective agreements are workers employed by AgeCare. The other is for workers employed by the Ontario-based Compass Group Canada Limited, also known as Marquise Hospitality.
Compass employs about 90 general support workers at Walden Heights, primarily in the kitchen, specifically, cooks, cook assistants, food services aides, dishwashers, housekeeping assistants, and laundry aides.
One of the AgeCare groups of workers are over 250 auxiliary nursing workers, including licensed practical nurses, health care aides, recreational therapy aides, and physical therapy aides.
The other AgeCare group are about 20 general support workers, including receptionists, schedulers, administrative assistants, housing coordinators, and maintenance workers. The Compass workers used to be part of this group.
All of these workers have been waiting for over a year for new collective agreements.
The most recent agreement for Compass workers expired over 2 years ago, in June 2024. Auxiliary nursing workers saw theirs expire 5 months 4 months before at the end of January 2024. The remaining general support workers have been without theirs since June 2025.
According to 3 updates AUPE published on their website last week (here, here, and here), both employers have been acting in bad faith in negotiations for new agreements.
All 3 collective agreements are now in mediation, after the workers’ bargaining committees were unable to reach tentative agreements with the employers.
Mediation with Compass Group ended up being just one day of informal mediation before the two parties moved to formal mediation. The employer’s monetary offer in formal mediation “would have left many of [the workers] working for less than a minimum wage”, according to the workers’ bargaining team.
However, Compass Group reps did not even show up to the mediation meeting scheduled for 22 June and, as of last week, still had not told the bargaining team nor the mediator why. Plus, they have yet to commit to further formal mediation.
The complaints for the two other groups were pretty similar.
AgeCare has been using the same representative—David Garratt, their director of labour relations—for negotiations with both groups. Garratt cancelled mediation sessions this past June with both groups.
He was supposed to meet with the AgeCare general support workers on 4 June and 11 June but then cancelled on the 3rd. He was supposed to meet with auxiliary nursing care workers on the 8th but cancelled on 25 May.
In both cases, Garratt has yet to bring forward monetary proposals from AgeCare. Plus, two months later, he has yet to offer new dates for the parties to resume negotiations.
The union is now trying to have a resolution conference for all 3 collective agreements, which would be held by the chair of the Alberta Labour Relations Board or one of the vice-chairs.
They are also trying to negotiation an essential services agreement, which is necessary before a strike vote our lockout poll can be held. Unsurprisingly, the employers are dragging their feet on this, too.
