Alberta’s Union Advantage

 

A short break from conservative rule under Rachel Notley’s NDP government brought modest gains for organized labour in the province. When conservatives returned to power in 2019, hard-fought advances to Alberta’s labour relations regime were predictably chiselled away. But Alberta’s unions have managed to withstand this assault, as unionization continues to deliver important material gains for workers despite a political and economic context set up to undermine the influence of collective bargaining.

In fact, the union advantage — the dollar and percentage difference between average wages earned by unionized workers and non-unionized employees — remains strong. These benefits exist even though Alberta has the lowest union density rate in Canada. Data further demonstrates that unions offer valuable intersectional gains for women, part-time workers, and immigrants. This points to the equalizing effect of collective bargaining for some of the most precariously employed workers in Alberta.

By the Numbers: Union Wage Advantages

Aggregated Labour Force Survey (LFS) data shows that the union wage advantage in Alberta in 2023 is 10% or $3.40/hr ($37.88/hr for unionized employees versus $34.48 for non-unionized), slightly higher than the 9% union wage advantage across Canada (Statistics Canada 2024d). Women, especially, gain from collective bargaining rights, as their wage advantage is 19% versus 4% for men. Unionization also helps shrink (but not close) the gender wage gap, from 19% to 8% (Statistics Canada 2025). Econometric results also show that while Canadian-born workers generally earn more than immigrants, this gap is eliminated or even reversed for unionized workers in some key industries. The benefits of unionization in Alberta for women and newcomers are congruent with findings in other jurisdictions in North America (Jacobs and Thomason 2018).

Much of the literature on collective bargaining wage advantages focuses on the wider labour market. Our report provides a deep dive into demographic- and industry-specific gains secured through unionization. Precariously employed workers in Alberta are some of the biggest winners. In 2023, part-time unionized workers earned 29% more per hour than their non-unionized counterparts, representing a gap of $9.66/hr (average wage of $32.57/hr for part-time unionized employees versus $22.91/hr for non-unionized workers). This is a larger union wage advantage than the 5% enjoyed by full-time workers ($38.83/hr versus $36.86/hr for non-unionized full-time workers) (Statistics Canada 2024d). This should serve as an important signal to precarious workers who are less likely to experience collective bargaining rights in Canada about the benefits of unionization.

• In Alberta, the gender wage gap for non-unionized workers is 19%, while for unionized workers it is smaller at 8% (Statistics Canada 2025). The lower gendered wage gap for unionized women is made possible, in part, by higher average hourly wage rates.
• Women reap more financial rewards from unionization than men. Data from Statistics Canada shows that, on average, the union wage advantage for women is 19%, while for men it is 4% (Statistics Canada 2025).
  
  

Unionization Lifts Up Immigrants and Young Workers

Unions have a long and often complicated history with foreign workers, migrants, and immigrant labour in Canada. From exclusionary policies to advancing important gains unique to newcomers and foreign workers, unions do affect the lived working realities of migrants employed in Canada. This is particularly important given the scope of non-permanent workers employed in Alberta, from coffee shops to the oil industry. Union renewal and membership growth are contingent on labour’s capacity to represent the interests of these workers. Our econometric analysis shows that unions can decrease or even reverse the wage gap between immigrant and non-immigrant labour in some industries with high proportions of immigrants.

• Key industries with the strongest advantages for immigrants are accommodation and food services, as well as educational services.
• Young workers have much to gain from unionization in terms of wage gains. Econometric modelling predicts a union wage advantage of 9% for workers aged 15 to 19 and 10% for those aged 20 to 24 — both well above the overall union wage advantage of 3%.
  
  

Non-Wage Advantages

Findings show that unionization provides workers with supplemental benefits — like paid sick leave or health and dental plans — that many non-unionized Albertans don’t enjoy. This is a noteworthy outcome in low-wage industries. As this report demonstrates, unionization increases the likelihood of securing supplemental benefits for workers across industries. Such a trend has persisted over time (Akyeampong 2002).

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear why entitlements such as paid sick leave helped keep workplaces and workers safe by allowing infected employees to avoid contact with the public and their coworkers without fear of financial hardship (Kerman et al. 2021; Thompson et al. 2021; Andersen et al. 2023). Public health evidence shows that these benefits contributed to curbing COVID-19 infections (Jelliffe et al. 2021; Thompson et al. 2021). This is true in Alberta and across Canada.

Benefits also help address inflation-induced pressures facing a growing number of workers, as pensions and dental and health coverage (i.e., parental top-ups, coverage for expensive dental procedures and preventative care, pharmaceutical plans) are added to their total compensation packages. In Alberta, the share of unionized workers with access to benefits is 94% compared with 79% of non-unionized workers (Statistics Canada 2024d).

Trends in Union Density

Alberta has one of the lowest union density rates in Canada, but the downward trend stalled during the pandemic. An increase in the number of health care and other public-sector workers helped to buoy an otherwise sinking density rate. Gains in the private sector were also noteworthy, since unionization in the public sector is traditionally far higher (74%) than in the private sector (11%) (Statistics Canada 2024h).

• Between 2022 and 2023, the private sector union coverage rate increased from 10.5% to 11.4%. This was led by transportation and warehousing, with a five percentage point increase in the coverage rate over that same period (Statistics Canada 2024h).
• Union density in the public sector can be explained, in part, by employment growth patterns in the province. Between 2010 and 2023, the greatest gain in the number of total employees was in health care. This industry also saw the largest increase in the number of employees with unionized coverage.
• Aggregated LFS data shows that workers with only a high school diploma comprise 14% of all workers with union coverage, higher than those who did not graduate from high school, as well as those with only some post-secondary education. High school graduates comprise a much larger share of workers without union coverage at 24%. Indeed, the typical unionized worker in Alberta is educated and employed in the public sector (Labour Force Survey 2024).
  
  

Deeper Dives

This report digs further into important Alberta industries — health care, education, construction, public administration, and oil and gas — to better understand collective bargaining coverage and the union effect. Workers in the province’s prized energy sector possess low union density rates and experience a marginal union wage advantage. Few other industries demonstrate this kind of relative parity between unionized and non-unionized workers. Data shows that higher levels of education may put upward pressure on the non-unionized wage, while unionized workers in this industry tend to be younger and are more likely to be women. Additional study is required to uncover why oil workers turn to unionization, and whether union representation in some areas might press employers to improve wages and benefits as a union avoidance strategy.

• While unionization offers clear wage advantages in construction, there is nuance throughout the industry and its various subcategories worth exploring.
• The wage advantage is higher for elementary and secondary school educators (24%), where the union density rate is 73%. This subsector makes up 64% of all educational service workers. The union wage advantage was lowest at 8% for community colleges and CÉGEPs (Collèges d'enseignement général et professionnel), with a union density rate of only 58%.
• In oil and gas, unionized and non-unionized workers earn approximately the same wages, with a 1% union wage advantage for oil and gas extraction workers, and a 1% disadvantage for employees in support activities.
  
  

High Wages, High Inequality

Alberta’s workers still experience some of the highest incomes in Canada. However, research suggests that the value of that advantage has been eroded more than in other jurisdictions despite a booming post-COVID resource sector (Stanford 2024). Alberta is also one of Canada’s least equal provinces. It is notable that inequality declined during the brief period of NDP governance in Alberta, as evidenced by the GINI coefficient.

• The worst period of income inequality in Alberta was in 2006, when the top 1% earned 19% of all income. Between 2006 and 2016, income inequality slowly improved in Alberta. However, the share earned by the top 1% has been increasing since 2016.
• In periods when inequality is high, union coverage rates are low. Research suggests that unionization impacts rates of inequality, along with a number of factors, including the public policy environment, income distribution programs, the structure of a collective bargaining regime, the concentration of union density by sector, and the political influence and trajectory of unions themselves.
  
  

Accounting for Wage Disadvantages

Our findings illustrate the economic value of unions for most types of workers in Alberta. Collective bargaining provides important material gains, like enhanced hourly wages and supplemental benefits, that are not otherwise enjoyed at the same rate by non-unionized workers in the province or across Canada. But what about the wage disadvantages identified in certain industries and sectors of the economy? The dataset we used for this analysis does not effectively account for why these disadvantages persist, but we can speculate based on gender, age, education levels, immigration status, job tenure, and occupation. The presence of out-of-scope supervisory or managerial occupations within the industry earning higher rates of pay may also skew the averages. Elsewhere, non-unionized employers might compensate employees at wage levels that compare to or exceed unionized averages in comparable workplaces as a union avoidance strategy (Broek 1997; Semuels 2022; Dundon 2002; Logan 2006).

It’s important to consider that a range of factors affect compensation, such as skill requirements, average age of employees, public versus private sector, education, demographic make-up of a workplace or industry, competitive factors unique to industries and sectors of the economy, the politics of specific unions — in addition to the prevalence of collective bargaining. For instance, in some industries, the wage disadvantage might be explained by the prevalence of unionized immigrant workers who possess lower levels of education than their non-unionized counterparts. The implication is that in some instances, education has a significant effect on expected wages beyond that of unionization alone. Additional research into specific industries and subsectors is required to adequately address union wage disadvantages where they exist. By itself, an aggregate wage disadvantage does not signal the ineffectiveness of unionization or collective bargaining in a particular industry.