For immediate release: Wednesday, June 18, 2003

CALGARY – Employees at two Carewest facilities have overwhelmingly signed petitions seeking to switch their membership from CUPE to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE).

As a result, AUPE applied Tuesday to the Alberta Labour Relations Board to become the union for support staff at Carewest George Boyack in northeast Calgary and Carewest Glenmore Park in the city’s southwest.

“Support for the petition to join AUPE was overwhelming among support staff at these sites,” said AUPE President Dan MacLennan.

“These employees want to join AUPE because AUPE is the largest union in Alberta and because it has a total focus on labour relations in this province,” MacLennan said. “They also want to join other Carewest employees who have made the move from CUPE to AUPE in the past several years.”

More than 2,000 health care members in communities throughout Alberta have voted to leave CUPE and join AUPE, including auxiliary nursing care employees at the Carewest Boyack and Glenmore Park facilities, and employees at Carewest Crossbow, Carewest Maintenance, the Calgary Health Region Warehouse and Central Park Lodge in Calgary. In the same period, about 70 employees at one worksite left AUPE to join CUPE.

Carewest, which operates continuing care facilities in the Calgary area, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Health Region 3, formerly the Calgary Health Region.

However, because Carewest employees are not directly employed by Health Region 3, they will not be able to take part in the runoff vote between AUPE and CUPE required under Bill 27, the province’s health sector labour relations restructuring law.

“Carewest employees don’t have the chance to participate in the runoff elections, but their interest in switching to AUPE clearly shows that AUPE is the union of choice in health care in Alberta,” said AUPE Union Representative Karen Thibault, who works in AUPE’s fully staffed Calgary Regional Office.

“We look forward to welcoming them into membership in AUPE,” she concluded.

The ALRB is expected to set a date soon for a formal certification vote at the two Calgary facilities.

AUPE has 53,000 members in Alberta, about 21,000 of them in the health care sector.

For more information, call:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-910-8392 (cellular phone)
Karen Thibault, Union Representative, AUPE (Calgary Regional Office), 403- 531-8610 or 403-816-7852 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)