For immediate release: Saturday, Sept. 4, 2004

AUPE president’s Labour Day message: Public employees provide quality public services in Alberta

EDMONTON — The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees will make an increased effort over the next 12 months to highlight the fact across Alberta that public employees provide quality public services, the union’s president says in his annual Labour Day message.

AUPE President Dan MacLennan noted that the bus benches now appearing in locations throughout Alberta are part of a continuing campaign to remind people of the importance and quality of the work done by the union’s members in government service, health care, education and other publicly funded agencies.

“We don’t repeat this message just to congratulate our members for a job well done,” MacLennan said in his Labour Day message to AUPE members and the public. “We do so to highlight that these services are best delivered directly as public services.”

MacLennan observed: “Study after study of the health care sector, the delivery of government services and the benefits of public education proves this fact.”

“We hope, through simple messages like our bus benches and other forms of advertising, to raise the awareness of our fellow Albertans that there are many jobs done better, with the principles of fairness clearly in mind, by dedicated public employees who live, work and provide services in their communities across the province,” he said in the message, which can be read in full on AUPE’s website, www.aupe.org.

Also in the message, MacLennan pointed to the challenges facing AUPE in the year ahead, among them integrating more than 6,800 new members into the union and negotiating new collective agreements for well over 40,000 members employed directly by the government, in health care, education and at other worksites.

“Our bargaining positions will be realistic and fair,” MacLennan said in the 2004 message. “They will reflect the rising cost of living in Alberta, the wages paid public and private sector workers doing similar work, and the favourable financial position in which our province finds itself.”

He noted that bargaining will be complicated in some instances by the need not just to ensure that employees are paid fair wages and benefits for the important work they do, but also to guarantee them some measure of job security in the face of the threat of privatization of services and jobs.

Click here to read Dan MacLennan's full Labour Day message.

For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-232-8392 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)