AUPE budgets $1.5 million to change Alberta’s labour laws
EDMONTON – Delegates to the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees annual convention have authorized spending $1.5 million over three years for a public awareness and lobbying campaign to change Alberta’s labour laws as they affect collective bargaining.
A key aspect of the campaign will be training AUPE members in provincial constituencies to ensure elected officials understand changes to labour law are important to members, their families and communities, and to raise the profile of these issues.
AUPE convention delegates unanimously passed a resolution Oct. 21 requiring the union to budget $500,000 a year for each of the next three years to raise public awareness and lobby for changes to the Public Service Employee Relations Act and the Labour Relations Code to end the infringement of working peoples’ rights to fair collective bargaining.
“The United Nations, through the International Labour Organization, has condemned Alberta’s current labour legislation for its infringement of internationally recognized worker rights,” AUPE President Dan MacLennan said today. “We have budgeted these funds to highlight this problem and train members to directly lobby Alberta politicians for change in their own constituencies.
“Over the next three years our goal is to have a direct effect on changing these laws,” he said.
Among the changes sought by AUPE are inclusion of first-contract arbitration rules that would force employers to bargain in good faith, and addition of fair and consistent essential-services regulations that would give public employees fair and full collective bargaining rights.
Approval of the lobbying campaign by AUPE’s 646 democratically elected convention delegates was one of the most important items of business among dozens of resolutions considered at the union’s 29th annual convention, which ran from Oct. 20 to Oct. 22 in Edmonton.
During the convention, delegates also approved a resolution to fund an ongoing public relations campaign to demonstrate the value, cost-effectiveness and efficiency of public services, and to attempt to stop employers from privatization and contracting-out of services.
Delegates resolved that each of AUPE’s 31 locals should donate up to $12 per member to assist union headquarters with the startup of the campaign. Some locals with limited funds will have the option of donating smaller amounts.
AUPE Local 001, which represents direct administrative support service employees of the provincial government, came forward and presented a cheque for more than $89,000 for the campaign to MacLennan.
“What these decisions show is that AUPE is serious about making it clear that Alberta desperately needs to improve what are now the most unfair labour laws in Canada, and about telling the public that public services are less expensive and more effective when delivered by public employees,” MacLennan said.
With more than 800 people in attendance each day, the convention was the largest in AUPE history.
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)