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A private ballot vote, not trickery.

That’s what will be required for Alberta workers to form a union once legislation under Bill 2, the Open for Business Act, becomes law in Alberta.

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And that news has some Calgary construction workers who unwittingly made history in what was believed to be Alberta’s first union certification without an employee vote celebrating that they may be one of the last.

“This is very good news for people like me,” one of the “tricked” workers said Tuesday.

“I heard that that law that made me feel like a fool, like a powerless fool, is going to be changed and I think that’s good,” said the worker, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of union retaliation.

That worker, who struggles with English, says being tricked into signing a union card back in late 2017 caused him much stress and ultimately led to smaller paycheques.

On Sept. 1, 2017, the then-Alberta NDP government changed union certification labour rules under what was euphemistically called the Fair and Family-Friendly Workplaces Act. What happened was members of Local 1111 of the Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union (which has since been taken over by Local 92) approached workers with Icon West Construction at their work site in downtown Calgary.