Wetaskiwin municipal workers get new contract

Last month, the Mediation Services department of Alberta Jobs, Economy, and Trade published their April 2024 Bargaining Update, which includes details on recently settled collective agreements.

One of the agreements was between Local 955 of the International Union of Operating Engineers and the County of Wetaskiwin.

Local 955 of IUOE represents about 45 workers employed by the county. These workers occupy a wide variety of positions, including labourers, welders, truck drivers, horticulturists, heavy duty mechanics, and equipment operators.

Their previous contract expired at the end of 2023, and this new contract was settled on 29 April.

Included in this new 3-year contract are wage increases in each year of the contract.

Year 1	2.0%
Year 2	2.5%
Year 3	3.0%

That works out to 7.5% over the life of the contract, or 7.69% when you account for compounding increases. That amounts to 2.50–2.56% per year, on average.

This modest increase is more than they received in their previous contract, which gave the workers 3 years straight of wage freezes.

In January 2020, the last time these workers received a wage increase prior to this latest contract, the consumer price index in Alberta sat at 144.7. This past January, however, it had climbed to 165.9.

That’s a increase of 21.2 points, or 14.65%.

So, while these workers were having to live with three years of wave freezes, the cost of living jumped nearly 15%. That means their real wages—wages adjusted for inflation—decreased by the same amount.

These workers were already behind on wages heading into negotiations.

Because their wage increase will be only about half of the inflation over the last 3 years, they’ll still end up with a reduction in real wages of over 7%.

And remember, that assumes we don’t see any inflation this year, next year, or in the final year of the contract, which, of course, is extremely unlikely. As a result, real wages for these workers will be even more behind inflation than they are now, even with the wage increase.

This employer should have offered much higher wage increases than they did.

Here are a few other changes in the new contract.

The following section was removed from the collective agreement:

When a machine breaks down and is brought into the County shop for repairs, the operator will be laid off until the machine is ready unless they is specifically directed to assist in the repairs by the shop foreman.

The tool allowance for mechanics supplying their own hand tools will increase from $80 per month to $100 per month.

The lead hand premium will increase from $2 an hour to $3 an hour.

The standby pay has been renamed “on-call pay” and has been increased from $25 a day to $35 a day.

Under the previous collective agreement, workers were entitled to 3 days of bereavement leave for the eath of a parent, parent-in-law, grandparent, grandchild, sibling, sibling-in-law, foster child, or any relative who was living with them. This has been increased to 5 days, which is the same amount of leave spouse and child bereavement.

In the section on sick leave, “disability” now includes “psychological illness”.

In the new contract, workers can opt out of benefit plans for life insurance, extended health care, disability insurance and dental care if their spouse has benefits plans through their own employer. As well, workers employed part-time with a full time equivalency of at least 0.6 can now participate in the employer benefit plans.

The health and wellness spending account will double in the new contract, from $250 a year to $500 a year. Vision care expenses are no longer explicitly listed as an eligible wellness-related activity for this spending account.

Finally, permanent patrol operators will see their guarantee payments change from a minimum of $3000 a month between November and March to a minimum of 110 hours worth of pay.