Notice to Media: Feb. 26, 2003

Activity: Information picket by AUPE members
Date: Friday, Feb. 28, 2003
Time: 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Place: Alberta Hospital Ponoka – all three entrances

PONOKA – Members of Local 042 of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees employed at the Alberta Hospital Ponoka plan to hold information pickets between 10:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Friday to air concerns about the transfer of mental health services from the Alberta Mental Health Board to regional health authorities.

"Many of our members have worked here for years, they deserve a fair collective agreement, and they deserve to have their years of service properly taken into account when and if responsibility for this facility is transferred to a new employer," said Dean Cunningham, a Registered Psychiatric Nurse at the hospital and an AUPE chapter chair.

AUPE represents more than 2,500 employees of the AMHB – approximately 600 of them at the mental health facility in Ponoka.

AUPE members are extremely concerned by the lack of information about the transfer of services, which is scheduled to take place on April 1, 2003, said AUPE President Dan MacLennan.

MacLennan will attend the information picket in Ponoka Friday.

The information picket is being held in conjunction with the opening of the new Adult Psychiatry Centre at the hospital’s large campus just south of the Ponoka town site.

For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-910-8392 (cellular phone)
Jim Smith, Chair, AUPE Local 042/001, 403-783-6462
Dean Cunningham, Chair, AUPE Local 042/002, 403-783-6268 or 403-704-7048 (cellular phone)
Susan Lloyd, Chair, AUPE Local 042/003, 780-352-8256
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)