AUPE creates new auxiliary nursing local for Southern Alberta
LETHBRIDGE – The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees has created a new local to provide better service for health region employees in Southern Alberta.
AUPE Local 041, which will receive union services from the AUPE Southern Alberta Regional Office in Lethbridge, represents approximately 900 auxiliary nursing care (ANC) employees of the Chinook and Palliser health regions.
“These members were part of Local 044, but the AUPE Executive Committee concluded that Local 044 was responsible for too large a geographic area,” AUPE President Dan MacLennan said today.
“This change will allow our members in Southern Alberta to focus on issues relevant to the health regions in which they work,” MacLennan explained. “It will also provide more money and resources directly to our members in these regions.”
“As a result, we decided to create the new Local 041 for our ANC members in Southern Alberta,” he said.
Local 044, meanwhile, will continue to represent AUPE’s approximately 1,700 ANC members in the David Thompson Health Region, headquartered in Red Deer. Local 044 will receive union services from AUPE’s Central Alberta Regional Office in Red Deer.
The Chinook and Palliser health regions are based in Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.
MacLennan said a Local 041 organizational meeting at which members will elect a local executive will be held in the near future.
AUPE, with more than 62,000 members is Alberta’s largest union. More than 31,000 of those members work in the health care sector, making AUPE Alberta’s largest health sector union.