The bargaining committee met with the Employer, Points West Living – Stettler, on February 10 and 11 and March 1 and 2, 2021 and had to endure some posturing from the employer before getting down to actual negotiations.
And though the Employer said there would no wage rollbacks for this round of negotiations, the Employer proposed language not related to wages, which clearly would be considered a roll back (ie: access to the facility, switching shifts, etc). When challenged by your negotiating team if the language proposals were specific to your worksite, the Employer conceded they were not and withdrew these proposals. The negotiating team believes the Employer was attempting to standardize language with other collective agreements but did not address our site specific issues.
Other than this, nothing out of the ordinary occurred during the four days of bargaining and both sides agreed to nearly all non-monetary issues.
We are scheduled to meet April 27 and 28, 2021 to further discuss any outstanding issues.
Your input was vital.
All of the changes we have proposed were gathered though interaction with our local members, consultation with our Membership Services Officer (MSO) and through a survey of the full membership to provide direction for this round of bargaining. We thank you all for your input and solidarity.
We invite members to share this bargaining update with their fellow employees. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions, concerns or feedback.
Points West - Stettler Negotiating Team
Tracy Matchett - tracymatchett@hotmail.com
Verna Kirtley - ekirtley85@gmail.com
Ella Henderson - eliprin@telus.net
AUPE Resource Staff
Christian Tetreault, Negotiator c.tetreault@aupe.org
Wayne Arthurson, Communications Officer w.arthurson@aupe.org