Coaldale residents sign petition with hopes of ending the lockout

Posted on October 23, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Kristine Jean
Sunny South News

While the Town of Coaldale’s lockout continues to drag on, some residents are speaking out and voicing their desire to see both sides return to the bargaining table to work on finding a solution. 

Longtime Coaldale resident Jessica Anne looked into ways she could help advocate for the town’s locked-out unionized workers. She did some research and reached out to several town councillors on social media, asking questions about how the lockout could end and what needed to be done to find a resolution. 

When she didn’t get any answers, she took matters into her own hands and created a petition that would bring the two parties together to resume negotiations. 

“These people are not working and times are tough for a lot of people so I wanted to do something that I could do to show my support for them,” said Anne. “This (petition) is something I can do that puts my support into action because advocating for them on social media and advocating for them with town council is not doing anything.”

Anne said the petition began the first week of October and will need about 1,000 to 1,500 signatures before she can present it to Town of Coaldale councillors, who would discuss it at a regular council meeting. 

“Basically, the petition itself is asking town council and the mayor to direct their CAO or designated officers, to go back to the negotiating table with the union,” she said. “Not to give into demands, but to go back and bargain in good faith.”

The petition falls under Section 232 and 232.1 of the Municipal Government Act and is also in accordance with Section 16 of the Town of Coaldale’s Council Procedural Bylaw, noted Anne. Residents can sign copies of the petition, which are located at the AUPE tent, which rotates picket lines between the town office on weekdays and the Coaldale Community Centre on weekends. 

So far, more than 200 residents have signed the petition.

More than 40 locked-out town workers, represented by the Alberta Union of Provncial Employees (AUPE) recently presented the town with a new proposal, which Coaldale councillors have decided to defer a decision on to the new council, following the Oct. 20 municipal election. 

Anne said that was not always the case, as several town councillors publicly stated on social media that they wanted to resolve the situation instead of pass it on to the new council. 

“I feel there’s been a lot of miscommunication between the town and the union, from my perspective. There was lots of misinformation,” said Anne, pointing to posts on Facebook by several members of town council. 

She noted the town’s public stance of transparency and responsibility for tax dollars and says that if non-unionized management pay is justified, why then not the unionized workers? As a tax paying citizen, Anne said someone needed to step up. 

“Somebody had to be the one to step up and (acknowledge) we’re (both sides) not handling this right. We need to do better because our people are locked out and they just want to go back to work,” she said. “This is people’s livelihoods, these people have families and some of the workers have been put in impossible situations where they have to choose to cross the line or get a new job.”

Anne said she feels what has transpired is not ethical and needs to stop. 

“I just truly believe what is going on is not right. We have our neighbours, our friends, our family locked out on the street right now and it’s not right,” said Anne. “The fact that this has actually gone as long as it has and it doesn’t even seem like a resolution will be coming anytime soon, not until at least mid-November, that’s not right and the fact that people think it’s ok is not right. I don’t understand how we got to a point where we can’t disagree.”

Anne’s hope in creating the petition was two-fold – to show locked out town workers that there are people in the community who support them and to show the town what’s going on isn’t the right thing to do.

“Regardless of what the offer was or what they called it as insultingly bad … this is our community,” said Anne. “They always advocate Coaldale as being such an amazing place, a welcoming place, a place where you want to start a family and grow old and theie actions are contradicting that vision of Coaldale.”