A number of CUPE employee contracts signed affecting local workers

By Medicine Hat News on February 9, 2024.

@MedicineHatNews

Workers at southeast Alberta’s public sector seniors housing operation have accepted an initial pay increase before beginning a four-year wage freeze, the latest update on collective bargaining in the province shows.

It is one of four contracts recently filed by the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local No. 46, based in Medicine Hat, and reflected in the January bulletin from the Alberta Jobs Ministry.

The Cypress View Foundation is jointly funded and governed in a three-party agreement between Cypress County, Redcliff and Medicine Hat to provide low-cost housing to older residents of those municipalities.

In December the Cypress View board and 80 workers represented by CUPE, Local No. 46, ratified a five-year contract that provides a immediate $2 per hour raise retroactive to last summer for all union positions.

No further wage increases are scheduled until the beginning of 2028, the final contract year, when rates rise by 1 per cent.

Fifty workers at the Town of Redcliff represented by CUPE 46 agreed to a $1.40 per hour increase across all positions to start a new four-year deal signed on Nov. 27. Raises of 2.0, 1.75 and 1.75 per cent follow in subsequent years.

That style of wage changes – an initial monetary amount followed by percentage increases – is similar to the recent settlement between 800 CUPE workers and the City of Medicine Hat.

Similarly, 35 workers at the Medicine Hat Public Library began their new contract in Nov. 2023 with a $1.55 per hour raise in year one, followed by annual raises of 2.25 and 2.0 per cent before the deal expires at the end of 2026.

Medicine Hat Community Housing Society and 40 CUPE members agreed to a four-year deal in November, including a 5 per cent pay bump in the first year, then 2 per cent annual increases up to expiration in late 2027.

Information on collective agreements becomes publicly available as they are filed by the parties with the ministry.

Another note of interest in Medicine Hat area is the end of a five-year negotiation between the United Nurses of Alberta and the River Ridge Seniors Village in the Hat.

A seven-year deal signed last February includes no retroactive increases for 13 UNA members, but provides a 4.3 per cent raise last year and a further 2.0 per cent before it expires next June.

Separately, Alberta Health Services and Covenant Health each came to terms for a first contract with the Alberta Union of Nurse Practitioners. The six-month deal expiring in March covers 399 AHS and 58 Covenant members of AUNP in the province.

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