Transit union, City of Lethbridge at bargaining impasse over Access-A-Ride agreement

There could be service disruptions coming for Lethbridge Transit's Access-A-Ride, as collective bargaining talks have reached an impasse.

After 18 days of talks, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 987 is seeking assistance from Alberta Mediation Services after its collective agreement bargaining process with the City of Lethbridge reached an impasse.

ATU Local 987, which represents about 140 transit workers and 45 Access-A-Ride (AAR) members, has been negotiating a new collective agreement for its AAR employees since March 2025.

“Eighteen days is a significant time,” said Travis Oberg, president of ATU Local 987.

“There hasn’t been a huge demand on each side. We are still battling off a few of the concessionary items the city has, and our position isn’t to take concession to ensure we get an equitable deal with our transit operator agreement.”

Oberg says the union is pushing for better working conditions for its AAR members.

“We’ve had issues in our scheduling with working conditions around loading and unloading times of the elderly and other passengers that we carry,” Oberg said during an interview with CTV News.

“We are living in an environment today where transit in the City of Lethbridge has been with the pedal to the metal for the last four years since the city brought in CityLINK, so we’re trying to ensure now that we slow the system down a bit for not only the safety of our passengers but also for the other community members that we serve.”

He says the union also wants to see a wage increase.

“We recognized that during the COVID years, this group of employees was the only one that didn’t get a fair compensation package out of all City of Lethbridge employees, so now we’re looking to get them back to the standard and the equity with the transit operators,” Oberg said.

This is not the first time ATU Local 987 and the city have entered into mediated talks, according to Oberg.

“We believed we were going to be able to come to some form of agreement, but we’ve noticed in the last couple of monetary passes that the city hasn’t moved on a couple of items,” Oberg said.

The City of Lethbridge says its bargaining team has been working hard to progress toward a new collective agreement.

“The city looks forward to continuing this work toward a new collective agreement,” the city said in a statement.

“ATU has chosen to seek the assistance of a mediator. The city confirms it is awaiting dates for this and is ready to return to the bargaining table as soon as possible to reach a fair deal.”

Oberg says the union and the city will meet with a mediator for two days at the end of the month.

If a deal is not agreed on, the union could vote to go on strike.

“Our goal is to never go on strike,” Oberg said.

“It impacts the community the most, especially the riders that rely on us to get to and from the locations they need to get to. But essentially, that is the process we have out in the labour movement, where we can use that ability if we need to use it.”