LETHBRIDGE – Members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees employed at the Edith Cavell Care Centre held an information picket today to draw attention to their employer’s refusal to negotiate a fair first collective agreement.

The members of AUPE Local 058/027 set up the information picket at the Lethbridge nursing home – which is operated for the Chinook Health Region by an out-of-province management company, Chantelle Management Ltd. of the Vancouver suburb of Langley.

Talks involving a provincial mediator requested by AUPE are scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to try to resolve the differences between the company and the union, which represents about 100 workers at the facility.

The support workers and personal care attendants voted to join the union in December 1999.
Since that time, said AUPE President Dan MacLennan, "this employer has done everything it can to avoid signing a fair agreement.

"They should stop wasting their energy and start bargaining the collective agreement their employees are legally entitled to have," he said. "Chantelle Management appears to be engaging in union-busting tactics and AUPE is not going to stand by and allow that to happen."

MacLennan added that "it’s disgraceful that a private-sector employer should be able to behave this way in a facility run on behalf of a taxpayer-supported health region."

Key issues in the dispute are low pay, inadequate or nonexistent corporate policies on upgrading and training, broken and inappropriate equipment and a skinflint attitude that is reflected in the treatment of residents, said AUPE Lethbridge Membership Services Officer Dale Perry, who was with the members on the information picket today.

"Our members are given no opportunities for upgrading, and they issued cheap, ill-fitting food-service gloves, not proper medical rubber gloves," Perry said. "Meals are counted, and if a resident asks for seconds, they’re told no. Families have to buy juice for their loved ones!"
Nursing attendants at the facility are paid a top rate of $12.20 per hour, compared with the $14.03 received by similarly qualified AUPE members doing similar work at other Lethbridge facilities, he said.

"Our members responded to this situation by exercising their right to be represented by a union," Perry said. "Whether Chantelle likes it or not, this Vancouver company is obligated by Alberta law to negotiate an agreement in good faith.

But so far, Perry said, "we’ve had difficulty getting them to the table, and when we do get them to the table they refuse to negotiate.

"We are running out of bargaining options," he warned. "Our members’ dispute is not with the residents they care for or their families, but with their employer’s corporate managers."

For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-910-8392 (cell phone)
Dale Perry, Membership Services Officer, AUPE, 403-329-1210 or 403-308-4549 (cell phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cell phone)

Please click here to view a copy of a leaflet distributed by the information picketers.

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