Bargaining Update: County of Northern Lights—Local 118, Chapter 010
After two intensive and productive days of bargaining with the employer, your negotiations team at the County of Northern Lights is excited to announce that we have reached a tentative agreement with the employer.
Despite some tensions at the bargaining table, your negotiations team has reached a deal that we believe is fair for members.
On monetary items, we secured a number of improvements, included annual salary increases, increases in flex spending accounts, improvements to the sick days system, and improvements to weekend and evening shift premiums, among other things. Your negotiations team will provide you with more specific details next week.
Alongside these improvements in monetary clauses, your negotiations team also secured some improvements to language in the non-monetary items of our collective agreement. We raised your concerns about the workplace with the employer at the bargaining table and were satisfied when the employer pledged to take those matters seriously.
With all of this in mind, your negotiations team is recommending that members vote Yes on the agreement.
Your negotiations teams wants to thank you for your support, solidarity, and unity through this process. Our collective agreement expired on Jan. 1, and we have already reached a tentative agreement, less than a month later. This is fairly exceptional—many worksites wait much longer before reaching a fair deal with the employer. If we were able to do that, it is only because we exercised our most powerful tool—solidarity.
Your negotiations team is available to speak about the agreement, and you will see the full agreement before long. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions, comments, or feedback. Let’s bring this across the finish line.
Northern Lights negotiations team
Trinidy Schmidt: trinidyschmidt@live.ca
Chris Crane: cranechris1982@icloud.com
Teresa Tupper: teresaatupper@hotmail.com
AUPE staff resources
Christian Tetreault, negotiator: c.tetreault@aupe.org