Last week, the Alberta Labour Relations Board published its final new applications report for August 2026. It covered applications they received between the 23rd and the 30th.
In the report was an application for a bad-faith bargaining complaint.
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees filed the application on 27 August 2026 on behalf of workers employed with Carewest.
The employer is the largest public care provider in Calgary. Their workers operate 14 locations throughout the city that offer long-term care, mental health care, alternate level of care, rehabilitation and recovery services, and community programmes and services.
AUPE represents about 1,600 Carewest workers employed in so-called “auxiliary” nursing care, such as licensed practical nurses and health care aides.
These workers have been waiting since June 2024—over 2 years—for a new contract. That is when their most recent collective agreement expired.
According to an update published to their website last week, AUPE claims that Carewest told workers that they planned to build a new facility in Bridgeland, a neighbourhood in Calgary. At the time, they told these workers, AUPE alleges, that some of them would be relocated to the new facility.
This past March, AUPE reports in their update, a representative from Carewest confirmed that workers “and their positions would be fully phased-in and relocated from Rouleau Manor to the Bridgeland facility” within the next year.
According to their complaint, AUPE said that at the time, Brynne Sherlow, an HR rep with Carewest, told a membership services officer for AUPE that they “expected to have possession of the Bridgeland Facility in November 2026 and that the employees and their positions would be fully phased in and relocated from Rouleau Manor to the Bridgeland facility by March 2027”.
In addition, Sherlow confirmed that “there would be no impact on the employment and terms of employment of the employees or their continued membership in and representation by AUPE”.
Last month, however, they told the bargaining team, who had been trying to negotiate a new collective agreement for their fellow workers, that employment at the new facility was taking a new turn.
This is despite the fact that the Bridgeland facility “would essentially be replacing” the Rouleau facility: “carrying on the same business and offering the same services to the same clients”.
AUPE said that Carewest told the bargaining team instead wants to lay off workers and then let them apply for the new positions at the Bridgeland facility.
Not only would there be any guarantee that these laid-off workers will even get hired, but also, because they are hiring from scratch, it would ne a non-unionized workplace and workers would have to begin the unionization process all over again if they want to be unionized.
Rouleau Manor has been a unionized workplace since 2017, as has Carewest’s Colonel Belcher, George Boyack Nursing Home, Cross Bow Auxiliary Hospital, Dr. Vernon Fanning Extended Care Center, Glenmore Park Auxiliary Hospital, Garrison Green, Sarcee, Signal Pointe, Nickle House, and C3 Beddington facilities.
Carewest apparently met with Rouleau workers last week to inform them in the change of plans.
AUPE has told the ALRB that it feels that these actions violate several sections of Alberta’s Labour Relations Code.
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) and (2).
Labour Relations Code, 60.3
If a notice to commence collective bargaining has been served pursuant to section 59(2), no employer affected by the notice shall, except in accordance with an established custom or practice of the employer, with the consent of the bargaining agent, or in accordance with a collective agreement in effect with respect to the bargaining agent, alter the rates of pay, a term or condition of employment or a right or privilege of any employee represented by the bargaining agent or of the bargaining agent itself until the right of the bargaining agent to represent the employees is terminated or a strike or lockout commences under Division 13.
Labour Relations Code, 147.3
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall participate in or interfere with the formation or administration of a trade union, or the representation of employees by a trade union, or contribute financial or other support to a trade union.
An employer does not contravene subsection by reason only that the employer in respect of a trade union that is a bargaining agent for the employer’s employees permits an employee or a representative of a trade union to confer with the employer during working hours or to attend to the business of the trade union during working hours without deduction in the computation of time worked by the employee and without deduction of wages in respect of the time so occupied, provides free transportation to representatives of the trade union for purposes of collective bargaining, the administration of a collective agreement and related matters, or permits the trade union to use the employer’s premises for the purposes of the trade union, makes to a trade union donations to be used solely for the welfare of the members of the trade union and their dependants, or expresses the employer’s views so long as the employer does not use coercion, intimidation, threats, promises or undue influence.
Labour Relations Code, 148.1.a.i & 148.1.a.ii
No employer or employers’ organization and no person acting on behalf of an employer or employers’ organization shall seek by intimidation, dismissal, threat of dismissal or any other kind of threat, by the imposition of a pecuniary or other penalty or by any other means, to compel an employee to refrain from becoming or to cease to be a member, officer or representative of a trade union
Labour Relations Code, 149.1.c
In their complaint, AUPE has asked the ALRB to declare that Carewest has violated the Labour Relations Code and that this declaration be posted in visible, accessible locations at the worksite.
They have also asked for the ALRB to order Carewest to stop violating the code and to not follow through with their new plans to lay off workers and force them to reapply for their jobs.
Because the ALRB does not archive their new application reports, I have included a copy of last week’s report below for your convenience.
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