Changes to important policies usually don’t happen with a press conference or a public outcry. Instead, they happen quietly, tucked away in a law with a name that sounds reasonable and is easy to forget. Alberta’s Bill 32, which is officially called the Restoring Balance in Alberta‘s Workplaces Act, is a good example of this.
The law, which was passed in 2020, covered a lot of ground, from the right to picket to the rules for arbitration. But hidden inside it was a change to overtime averaging that could mean the difference between a nice bonus and no bonus at all, depending on where you work and how your shifts are scheduled. Overtime hours can now be averaged over 52 weeks instead of just 12 weeks, which was the old rule. That sounds like it would be for the government. So, in practice, it means employers can legally spread out long workweeks over months with slower times, which gets rid of any overtime liability.
For people who work in industries where busy times are regular and intense, like construction, oil and gas, and farming, the math gets tough very quickly. It’s possible that hours that would have been considered overtime in the past could now just be added to the annual average. It doesn’t move to a different line on their pay stub for the overtime pay they would have gotten. It goes away.
One of Canada’s biggest private-sector unions, Unifor, didn’t hold back when they talked about it. The leaders of the union called the change a “transfer of wealth,” saying that it meant that millions of dollars that workers had earned were given back to employers by changing the rules. That way of putting it is sharp, but the math is hard to argue with. There are exact times called “averaging windows” that show when extra work is rewarded. By making that window bigger to a whole year, the goal is to lower the number of times that threshold is crossed.
This is especially interesting to watch because it puts pressure on unionized workplaces in a roundabout way. The overtime rules in Bill 32 don’t apply to workers whose collective agreements already include clear language about averaging. But that carve-out is based on a sound reasoning. If the floor goes down, which means minimum standards go down, collective bargaining agreements have to go even further to keep what workers already had. In the next round of talks, the difference between union protections and basic employment standards will be used against the company.
This isn’t new ground in Alberta. A 2019 law called Bill 2 undid some changes made by the NDP to employment standards. It was called the Act to Make Alberta Open for Business. People who were getting overtime pay at time-and-a-half, which meant they got 1.5 hours off for every hour they worked over the limit, had their pay changed back to straight time. One hour was worked over, and one hour was saved. Employees liked the NDP change, but it didn’t seem to go over well with the lobbying class.
People who work in Alberta may not have felt the full effects of these changes yet; they’re more likely to have seen them as a slow, accumulating change in what they can expect from a long workweek. The rules were changed. In the end, the pay checks will show that. There will be times when workers realize this without reading a headline. For many, it will happen when the numbers don’t add up the way they used to.
