Earlier this month, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed an unfair labour practice complaint with the Alberta Labour Relations Board.
AUPE represents over 400 workers employed by Bloom Limited Partnership, which operates care facilities owned by AgeCare. In this case, they are Jasper Place Continuing Care Center, Miller Crossing Continuing Care Centre, and South Terrace Continuing Care Centre.
Bloom took over as employer in 2023 from AXR Operating (National) GP, which managed the properties for Revera.
The workers at these facilities include licensed practical nurses, health care aides, unit clerks, therapy aides, receptionists, hospitality aides, and workers in the kitchen and maintenance.
Their most recent collective agreement expired March 2022, so these workers have been waiting for over 4 years for a new collective agreement. Even if they do get one soon, it will likely be a 4-year contract, so would be expired by the time it is ratified.
According to the complaint, Bloom met with the workers’ bargaining team only 8 times for negotiations prior to informal mediation last month. They met 4 times in 2023, just twice in 2024 and twice in 2025.
Even though the workers’ bargaining committee issued a notice to bargain in February 2022, the employer never met with them until October 2023, more than a year and a half later.
Over the next 2.5 years, the employer has insisted on the same pathetic wage offer:
| 1 April 2022 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2024 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2024 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2025 | 1.00% |
3 wage freezes over 4 years. That is on top of the 2 wage freezes in their previous agreement.
| 1 April 2018 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2019 | 0.00% |
| 1 April 2020 | 1.00% |
| 1 April 2021 | 1.25% |
So, Bloom wants these workers to have 5 wage freezes over 2 contracts and a combined wage increase of just 3.25%?
Let us put this in context.
In April 2017, the consumer price index in Alberta sat at 137.4 points. By April 2025, that had increased to 171.1 points. That is a jump of 33.7 points, or 24.53%.
To be clear, inflation over the course of these workers’ last contract and the proposed contract has been over 24.5%, but Bloom wants to increase their wages by only 3.25% for both contracts?
That would leave them with a cut to real wages of over 21%.
This means that if these workers did get that 1% increase proposed by Bloom, it would cost them $121.28 to buy something last year that would have cost them $100 in 2017. Either that, or they could only afford to pay $78.72 worth of that thing that they bought in 2017.
AUPE had proposed 12% over 4 years (2.75% in each of the first two years, followed by 3,5% and 3.00%).
Other public sector workers represented by AUPE have been getting 12% over 4 years in the collective agreements they have ratified over the last year and a half or so, and even that is still insufficient. But at least 12% is not as laughable as 1%.
The workers’ bargaiing team also asked for market adjustment increases of 4% for health care aides, 4.7% for therapy aides, and 10% for licensed practical nurses, which would help these workers recoup more of their lost real wages. Bloom rejected these proposals.
In their complaint, AUPE called Bloom’s position on wage increased and compensation “a fantasy made in abstraction from the real world of collective labour relations bargaining where parties must be prepared to base their positions on the objective realities of the economy and the labour market in order to have any realistic chance of achieving a negotiated collective agreement”.
Furthermore, they claimed that “the Employer’s position is so detached from market and comparator realities that any reasonable Employer would know that any reasonable Union would never accept such a proposal”.
As such, the union told the labour board that they believe this ridiculous wage proposal violated section 60 of Alberta’s Labour Relations Code, specifically section 60.1 and 60.3
When a notice to commence collective bargaining has been served under this Division, the bargaining agent and the employer or employers’ organization, not more than 30 days after notice is served, shall meet and commence, or cause authorized representatives to meet and commence, to bargain collectively in good faith, and make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement.
No employer, employers’ organization or bargaining agent and no authorized representative acting on behalf of any of them, after having served or having been served with a notice to commence collective bargaining pursuant to this Division, shall refuse or fail to comply with subsections (1)
The union is asking the ALRB for several remedies.
First, they want the ALRB to declare that Bloom has violated the Labour Relations Code and require that Bloom post that declaration on their website and in the worksites. They also want Bloom to stop violating the Code.
They have asked the ALRB to order Bloom to stop disparaging the union in communications to workers, including notices, emails, and in-person. Related to that, they want a retraction from Bloom of such messaging.
They want the ALRB to declare that the 1% wage increase and 3 years of wage freezes in bad faith bargaining and a code violation and order them to withdraw that proposal and “fashion a new monetary proposal that has some rational connection with objective macroeconomic, microeconomic, and labour market evidence and reality”.
They are also seeking an order from the labour board to get the employer back to the bargaining table but this time “for as many continuous days as are necessary in order to conclude a collective agreement”.
Finally, they have asked for $50,000 in damages from Bloom.
