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Unionized Town employees have been locked out because negotiations between the Town and AUPE have reached an impasse. The Town has tabled multiple fair offers—most recently Comprehensive Offer #3—that included the the following:
- A four-year agreement with annual general wage increases of:
- January 1, 2025 - 8.5% (2.5% + 6% (on average) in market adjustments to base pay)
- January 1, 2026 - 2.75%
- January 1, 2027 - 2.75%
- January 1, 2028 - 3%
- 12 paid sick day/year;
- 12 paid statutory holidays/year;
- 4 weeks of paid vacation after 2 years of service;
- 1 paid personal day /year;
- 5 paid parental leave days upon the birth or adoption of a child;
- a $1000 annual Health Spending Account;
- 100% employer funded health and dental benefits;
- participation in the LAPP defined benefit pension program;
- standby pay of $60 (weekday), $90 (weekend), and $125 (statutory holiday);
- 2.5X the normal hourly rate of pay on statutory holidays;
- a $3/hour shift differential for working evenings and weekends;
- a $250/year winter boot allowance;
- a $250/year safety boot allowance; and
- a 2% vacation pay boost for casual and seasonal employees (from 4% to 6%).
On August 6, 2025, the Town's unionized staff rejected this package and decided to hold out for an agreement that goes far beyond what taxpayers and the local economy can reasonably support. As a result, during a Special Council Meeting on Monday, September 2, Coaldale Town Council unanimously passed the following motion:
THAT Council direct the CAO to serve the AUPE with 72-hour Lockout Notice pursuant to its rights under Section 78(2) of the Labour Relations Code following written confirmation from the Labour Relations Board.
- A four-year agreement with annual general wage increases of:
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No. The Town has been at the bargaining table for nearly a year, has participated in two full days of formal mediation, and has put forward three comprehensive offers—each one more generous than the last. What has prevented progress is AUPE’s refusal, from the very start, to consider even modest rollbacks. In fact, AUPE set a precondition of “no rollbacks” before negotiations had really begun. Imagine an employer entering bargaining by declaring “no increases”—that would also shut down meaningful discussion.
Negotiation requires give and take. The Town’s approach has been principled and balanced: offering significant across-the-board increases and enhanced benefits while asking for only a handful of modest rollbacks to help keep costs sustainable. By contrast, AUPE has insisted on all “take” and no “give.” That is not negotiation—that is confrontation.
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Two main reasons:
- Because every dollar spent on municipal salaries, wages, and benefits comes from the Coaldale taxpayer (the invisible/silent but most important stakeholder involved this negotiation); and
- Council cannot in good conscience further widen an already wide gap between public sector compensation rates and what Coaldale businesses can afford to pay their own employees, many of whom perform the same or similar tasks and have the same or similar skills.
To read Council's open letter to the community, which explains exactly why Council is standing firm, click here.
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For negotiations to resume, AUPE needs to come back to the table with realistic expectations. Coaldale Town Council has already shown good faith by offering four years of general wage increases, 100% employer-paid premiums on health and dental, enhanced parental leave, 4 weeks of vacation after 2 years of service, and other benefits. The Town remains open to talking again, but it has to be a genuine conversation about balancing staff needs with the economic realities facing taxpayers - and in particular the private sector. Until AUPE is prepared to scale back its demands, including its pre-condition of "no rollbacks" (a bargaining pre-condition the Town never has and never will agree to), there is no reason to resume negotiations.
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In July 2021, the Town of Coaldale participated in a Council remuneration study conducted by Hillcrest Financial and sponsored by the Town of Blackfalds. As a participating municipality, Coaldale received the study’s findings at no cost. The study examined honoraria, per diems, expense policies, technology allowances, and the approaches other municipalities use to establish Council compensation. Ten Alberta municipalities of comparable size participated in this study, and the findings were conclusive: at the time of the study, and before Council’s 2022 update to its remuneration policy (Policy C-013), Coaldale’s Mayor and Councillors were compensated below the 25th percentile of the comparator group. For example, the Mayor’s annual honorarium stood at $33,528, compared to $65,664 in Morinville, while Councillors received $20,112 annually—well below what the vast majority of their municipal peers were already receiving:
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Also important to recognize, however, is that in 2019 the federal government eliminated a long-standing policy that allowed one-third of an elected official’s salary to be tax free. This change meant that municipal elected officials across Canada saw an immediate reduction in their net pay, even though their gross remuneration had not changed. Many municipalities, including nearby Taber, chose to increase the gross salaries of their Mayors and Councillors to offset this loss and preserve net income. Coaldale, however, did not make such an adjustment. As a result, while other communities corrected for the federal tax change, Coaldale Town Council’s compensation remained static, creating a situation where it lagged for years.
For these reasons, Council approved an updated remuneration policy in September 2022. Effective January 1, 2023, the Mayor’s annual honorarium was set at $48,276 and Councillors’ at $26,760. Importantly, Council established that future compensation would be set at the 65th percentile of a market survey conducted every four years, ensuring predictability, transparency, and external benchmarking. Annual adjustments were also explicitly tied to the same cost-of-living factor negotiated in the collective agreement with unionized staff.
The cost of the 2022 correction was relatively modest, requiring an estimated 0.57 percent in additional tax revenue. And despite the 2022 correction, to this day total compensation for Coaldale’s Mayor and Councillors – which includes salary plus benefits/allowances – remains below average:
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Yes. AUPE executives receive staggering compensation packages. In 2024, AUPE’s President, Guy Smith’s total compensation amounted to $309,108, and included nearly $200,000 in base salary, nearly $50,000 in benefits, and tens of thousands more in vacation pay, travel, and allowances. Meanwhile, AUPE Vice Presidents each earned $118,500 in salary, received over $40,000 in benefits, and each spent tens of thousands of dollars in subsistence and travel allowances for total compensation packages worth over $200,000. This includes AUPE’s South Vice President, Curtis Jackson, who has singled out Coaldale’s Mayor for earning $48,276 per year while he himself is on track to collect more than 4 times as much in total compensation this year alone:
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No. In a September 2, 2025, media release, AUPE cherry-picked a single comparator — Taber — to claim Coaldale’s CAO is “overpaid,” while ignoring the full picture. As the chart below demonstrates, Coaldale’s CAO has the second-lowest base salary and the third-lowest total compensation among comparable municipalities in Alberta.
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No. AUPE's framing is inaccurate. Not every exempt (non-union) employee at the Town is a “manager.” Exempt (out-of-scope) employees include directors, managers, and the CAO, but also technical professionals such as planners, engineers, and accountants who are legally precluded from union membership under the Labour Code. Of Coaldale’s 26 exempt staff, only 15 carry some supervisory responsibilities, but managing others (whether employees or contracted service providers) is only a fraction of their work. The remaining exempt staff are professionals with no direct reports.
Equally important to recognize, however, is that AUPE ignores how many frontline services are provided through contractors and regional partnerships in Coaldale:
- RCMP policing;
- waste collection;
- paid-on-call fire services;
- water treatment;
- IT support; and
- dispatch.
The provision of these services involves dozens of frontline workers who do not appear in Coaldale’s “unionized staff” count, because they are not technically Town employees. Comparing “26 managers to 43 union staff” without this context is not only arbitrary, but again, deceptive.
Finally, AUPE’s comparison of the ratio between union and non-union staff at the City of Lethbridge and union and non-union staff at the Town of Coaldale is, to put it bluntly, laughable. While AUPE claims that the City has “29 out-of-scope staff and 900 permanent workers” (1 supervisor for every 31 employees) the City’s own 2025 Compensation Disclosure List reveals that there are at least 194 non-union employees currently working at the City (nearly 5 times as many out-of-scope staff as AUPE alleges).
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No. The decision to rent billboards and place newspaper ads was made to ensure residents have access to clear and accurate information about the ongoing lockout. Because the lockout is directly tied to municipal operations, and because AUPE has been spreading misinformation to both its members and our residents, we felt it was important to use these tools to help keep the community properly informed.
The cost of these communications initiatives (200$ per sign per month) falls well within the Town’s annual communications budget, which Council approves. That budget exists specifically to ensure residents remain informed about municipal services and operations, and this situation is no different.
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Even in the midst of a lockout, Coaldale Town Council has a duty to maintain essential services for residents. To do that, Council has instructed the Town's exempt staff to rely on a combination of their own expertise, private contractors, and (in keeping with what the law allows) replacement workers for positions that were previously held by union employees.
The wage rates published in the 25 full-time job ads for these positions come directly from Comprehensive Offer #3, the same compensation package that AUPE publicly labelled “insultingly bad” and that unionized staff directly voted on and rejected. To see what what AUPE considers "insultingly bad" click here.
