Dressed in red and marching with flags and megaphones, members of an Alberta union made their presence known in High River.
Different Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) branches are bargaining for a new contract demanding fair compensation amid high inflation and the rising cost of living.
Curtis Jackson is Vice President of AUPE for the South Region and says workers are also feeling burnout and need relief.
“Better work-life balance and addressing of the short staffing issues. We also want job security language in our contracts,” he said. “Every AUPE member was working through the pandemic, we were burning out and that shown a light on the amount of mental health supports that we currently have and how it's not meeting our needs.”
Members of @_AUPE_ rallied near the High River General Hospital as the union is bargaining for a new contract.@suncountry997 pic.twitter.com/rfWaZCRgGT
— Derek Craddock (@DACradd) July 24, 2024
Bonnie Gostola, the VP for AUPE in the Calgary Region was also present at the rally and says that the needs of rural communities are at stake if services like public health care are not invested in properly.
“When you start losing your government offices, you start losing your healthcare facilities, you start losing those services, the communities themselves start to fail. You start to force our public people to go longer and longer distances to get care,” she said. “This government needs to understand that people live, spend money and support the communities where they live.”
Jackson said the current offer for AUPE workers does not address the projected cost of inflation for this year or tackle concerns regarding work-life balance.
The General Support Services (GSS) negotiating team started talks with Alberta Health Services (AHS) in February.
The negotiating team proposed a two-year collective agreement with a 25 per cent wage increase this year and a 10 per cent increase on April 1, 2025.
AHS countered with a four-year agreement with a two per cent wage hike in 2024 and 2025 followed by 1.75 per cent in 2026 and 2027.
Job security was not mentioned in the first bargaining meetings which AUPE says is a major concern for healthcare workers. The union claims that the Province is considering rolling back services including removing the ability to take two paid hours for medical appointments and introducing red circling, a practice of freezing employees' wages who are paid more than colleagues doing similar work until those colleagues' pay reaches the same level.
The two sides last met on June 10 and 11, with the AUPE saying little progress was made.
“We proposed solutions to our workload issues, but AHS would not agree with us,” AUPE said on June 13. “We also raised the financial hardship we are all facing because of inflation, the cost of living, and the low wages our employer wants to keep paying us.
“AHS did not improve their wage proposals. In fact, they restated their original insulting offer and compared it to wages that some health care workers are making in the private sector.”
Private sector healthcare jobs are also a big concern for Jackson who referenced the transfer of lab services from Alberta Precision Labs (APL) to private carrier DynaLIFE before they were transferred back to APL in 2023.
In 2021, AHS moved its laundry and linen services to K-Bro Linen Systems, but Jackson says there have been reports of soiled laundry bags returning to health centres.
“In no way is this safe or sanitary for the people of Alberta who rely on these,” he said.
AUPE is also frustrated that AHS is refusing to negotiate on whether workers can choose to stay with the Health Services or the newly created Recovery Alberta service. The union claims that other AHS employees have been given this option.
In response to the negotiations and issues of wages and job security, Alberta’s Minister of Finance Nate Horner says the government’s opening offer aligns with the Conference Board of Canada’s findings that many Albertans received a salary increase between two and three per cent in 2023 and 2024.
The statement goes on to say that the demands AUPE is making are not seen among any publicly funded employees in Canada.
“Given the union’s extreme wage positions, working towards a settlement in a timely manner will be difficult and result in delays getting a fair and reasonable wage increase to public sector employees,” said Horner.
“The Alberta government will not increase taxes or cut programs, services, or workers to give unprecedented salary increases that will result in pay well above market rates. Rather, we must balance our ability to invest in programs and services Albertans rely on with fair and competitive compensation for workers.”