Employees at Red Deer’s Bethany CollegeSide facility vote to join AUPE
RED DEER – Auxiliary nursing care employees at the Bethany Care Society’s new CollegeSide long-term care facility have voted overwhelmingly to join the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
Voting took place throughout the afternoon Thursday at their worksite in Red Deer. Votes were counted Thursday evening.
“We welcome these new members and we will work hard to bring high-quality union services to their worksite quickly,” AUPE President Dan MacLennan said today.
“Many of these front-line health care employees have worked in unionized workplaces before and they wanted to continue the advantages of union membership that they had enjoyed before,” MacLennan observed.
“As the strength of this vote indicated, health care workers in Alberta continue to look to AUPE for strong, effective leadership in their workplaces,” he said.
Some of the approximately 90 employees at the long-term care facility, which opened in the spring of 2004 based on a partnership among Bethany Care, Red Deer College and the David Thompson Health Region, approached AUPE late in 2005.
“Over the past two weeks, more than 70 per cent of the facility’s ANC staff signed a membership petition to show their willingness to join AUPE, so we were quite confident about the outcome of the vote,” said AUPE Membership Services Officer Kathy Kadyk, who works out of AUPE’s Central Alberta Regional Office in Red Deer.
The percentage of votes in favour of joining AUPE was significantly higher than the percentage of employees who signed the petition, she noted, adding that the employer did not oppose the union’s application for certification as the employees’ union.
Kadyk said AUPE will now schedule a general meeting of the new members within about two weeks, and chapter officers will be elected at that time.
For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-232-8392 (cellular phone)
Kathy Kadyk, Membership Services Officer (Central Alberta Regional Office, Red Deer), 403-343-2166 or 403-302-1966 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)