Alberta’s Labour Statutes Amendment Act, 2022 makes two targeted changes to provincial labour law. It removes the annual 20-day ceiling for reservists’ unpaid leave for training, broadens bereavement leave to cover miscarriage and stillbirth, and updates the definition of common-law partner used in the leave provisions.
The bill also changes how the Labour Relations Code applies to public postsecondary institutions, universities and comprehensive academic and research universities. It eliminates the delayed-application mechanism for collective-bargaining provisions affecting academic staff, academically employed graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, while preserving their exclusion from specified Code divisions.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill removes the 20-day annual limit on unpaid reservist leave for annual training and repeals a transitional provision governing when the reservist-leave division applies. It creates express eligibility for up to three days of unpaid bereavement leave following a family member’s death, miscarriage or stillbirth, subject to a 90-day employment requirement and reasonable notice.
Who It Affects
Employees who serve as reservists may take annual-training leave without the former statutory day limit. Employees and their spouses or common-law partners affected by miscarriage or stillbirth receive an express leave entitlement, while postsecondary boards, universities, academic staff, academically employed graduate students and postdoctoral fellows operate under the Labour Relations Code’s specified exclusions.
Why It Matters
The labour-standards changes recognize military training and pregnancy-loss circumstances that the prior provisions treated more narrowly. The postsecondary amendments remove legal uncertainty created by a future-effective provision and make the applicable collective-bargaining framework more immediate and defined.
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What This Bill Actually Does
For reservists, the bill removes the phrase limiting annual training leave to 20 days in a calendar year. The entitlement remains unpaid and remains subject to the Employment Standards Code’s other conditions, including the existing requirement that the employee complete at least 12 consecutive weeks of employment.
The bill also repeals the provision that limited the division’s application to operations or activities beginning after a specified commencement point, along with related notice language elsewhere in the division.
The bill rewrites the common-law partner definition used in the reservist and bereavement provisions. The revised definition focuses on whether the person cohabits in a conjugal relationship with the employee for a continuous period of at least one year at the relevant time.
It then replaces the existing death-only bereavement leave rule with a broader entitlement: an employee employed by the same employer for at least 90 days may take up to three unpaid days in a calendar year after a family member’s death, the employee’s miscarriage or stillbirth, a spouse or common-law partner’s miscarriage or stillbirth, or a miscarriage or stillbirth involving a pregnancy from which the employee would have become a parent.The bereavement provision uses related statutory definitions for “common-law partner” and “parent,” rather than leaving those terms to ordinary workplace interpretation. It also retains a notice standard based on what is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances.
The entitlement is capped at three days in the calendar year, so the listed events do not create separate three-day allotments under this section.On collective bargaining, the bill replaces section 58.2 of the Labour Relations Code. Divisions 5 to 9 and section 156 continue not to apply to the specified university and postsecondary relationships: academic staff at public postsecondary institutions, academically employed graduate students at universities and postdoctoral fellows at comprehensive academic and research universities.
The bill removes the former subsection that would have made Divisions 4 to 9 apply on a future date unless the Lieutenant Governor in Council set a later date after consulting affected parties. It also removes corresponding “future effects” qualifications from provisions identifying the relevant academic, graduate-student and postdoctoral-fellow bargaining agents.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill removes the statutory 20-day annual limit on unpaid reservist leave for annual training, including related travel time; the entitlement remains subject to regulations and other eligibility rules.
Bereavement leave remains unpaid and is limited to three days in a calendar year, even when more than one qualifying death, miscarriage or stillbirth occurs.
The new bereavement entitlement requires at least 90 days of employment with the same employer and requires notice that is reasonable and practicable in the circumstances.
The revised common-law partner definition requires continuous cohabitation in a conjugal relationship for at least one year at the relevant time.
The Labour Relations Code amendments take effect July 1, 2022 and remove the provision that allowed a later commencement date to be set after consultation with affected parties.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Removes the reservist-training cap and transitional rule
The bill strikes the limit of up to 20 days in a calendar year from the unpaid reservist leave entitlement for annual training and related travel. It also repeals section 53.8, which restricted the division’s application based on when the relevant operation or activity began and when notice was given.
The practical result is an open-ended statutory entitlement for qualifying annual training rather than a fixed annual ceiling. The provision does not make the leave paid and does not remove the Code’s existing conditions or regulatory qualifications.
Expands bereavement leave for pregnancy loss
The bill updates the common-law partner definition and creates a dedicated bereavement leave provision. After 90 days with the same employer, an employee may take up to three unpaid days following a family member’s death, the employee’s miscarriage or stillbirth, a spouse or common-law partner’s miscarriage or stillbirth, or a pregnancy loss involving a child the employee would have parented.
The provision incorporates the Code’s existing meaning of “parent” and sets a single calendar-year maximum. It therefore gives employers a defined but limited leave obligation, while requiring employees to provide as much notice as is reasonable and practicable.
Makes the postsecondary labour exclusions immediate
The bill replaces section 58.2 so that Divisions 5 to 9 and section 156 do not apply to the specified academic staff, academically employed graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, or to the relevant institutional boards acting as their employers. It deletes the former rule under which Divisions 4 to 9 would later apply unless the Lieutenant Governor in Council selected a later date.
Related amendments remove language that made bargaining-agent status subject to the future effects of that delayed application. The named academic staff, graduate student and postdoctoral fellow associations therefore retain their statutory bargaining-agent descriptions without the former contingency appearing in those provisions.
Sets the commencement date
The Labour Relations Code amendments come into force on July 1, 2022. This date gives institutions and affected associations a defined point at which the revised application rules and related bargaining-agent provisions govern.
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Who Benefits
- Reservist employees who need more than 20 days for annual military training benefit from the removal of the fixed statutory ceiling on unpaid leave.
- Employees experiencing a miscarriage or stillbirth, and employees supporting a spouse or common-law partner through one, gain an express employment-standards entitlement rather than relying on a death-only bereavement provision.
- Employees who would have become parents of a pregnancy that ended in miscarriage or stillbirth are expressly included in the leave framework.
- Academic staff at public postsecondary institutions, academically employed graduate students and postdoctoral fellows receive a clearer statutory description of the Labour Relations Code provisions that do and do not apply to their employment relationships.
- Academic staff, graduate student and postdoctoral fellow associations benefit from the removal of conditional language tied to a possible future expansion of the Code’s application.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers with reservist employees may face longer periods of unpaid job-protected absence for annual training because the statute no longer caps that leave at 20 days.
- Employers must administer new bereavement-leave requests involving miscarriage and stillbirth, including assessing eligibility after 90 days of employment and handling reasonable-notice questions.
- Public postsecondary institutions, universities and comprehensive academic and research universities must align labour-relations policies and bargaining processes with the July 1, 2022 framework.
- Human-resources and payroll teams must distinguish the new three-day bereavement entitlement from other leave categories and apply the calendar-year cap consistently.
- Academic and postdoctoral bargaining representatives may lose flexibility associated with the former delayed-application mechanism, because the bill removes the possibility of a later regulatory start date for the specified provisions.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The bill expands employees’ ability to take protected time away from work while limiting employers’ ability to predict or control the resulting absences. Removing the reservist cap supports military obligations but eliminates a simple planning boundary; recognizing pregnancy loss provides a defined workplace response but confines varied circumstances to a three-day unpaid entitlement. In the postsecondary sector, eliminating delayed application improves certainty, yet the preserved exclusions leave institutions and bargaining representatives to manage a specialized labour-relations framework rather than a uniform one.
The reservist amendment removes a clear quantitative boundary without replacing it with a new statutory maximum. That better accommodates training obligations that vary by military role, but it also makes workforce planning less predictable for employers.
Because the leave is unpaid, the bill addresses job protection and absence rather than income replacement; the practical value of the entitlement will depend on the employee’s ability to take unpaid time away from work and on any applicable regulations.
The bereavement amendment is broader in subject matter but narrow in duration. It recognizes several forms of pregnancy loss and uses a single three-day annual ceiling, creating a straightforward administrative limit but potentially compressing materially different circumstances into the same leave bank.
The bill also does not specify documentary proof requirements, leaving employers to apply the general notice standard without an express evidentiary rule.
The postsecondary provisions remove a future-oriented transition and preserve exclusions from specified Labour Relations Code divisions. That produces a cleaner statutory structure, but the bill itself does not resolve every operational question about bargaining rights, institutional relationships or the interaction between excluded provisions and the parts of the Code that remain applicable.
Institutions and associations must therefore map the revised exclusions against the Code as a whole rather than treating the amendment as a general change to unionization rules.
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