Good Sam employees at two Lethbridge continuing-care facilities vote to join AUPE
Lethbridge – Employees at two Good Samaritan Society continuing-care facilities in Lethbridge have voted overwhelmingly to join the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.
Ballots cast by the previously non-union employees at the West Highlands Centre and Park Meadows facilities in the Alberta Labour Relations Board-supervised worksite vote were counted yesterday at the board’s Calgary offices.
“We are very pleased to welcome this group of 75 new members into the AUPE family,” AUPE President Dan MacLennan said today. “By being part of a union, especially a large and effective union like AUPE, they will have the opportunity to improve their pay and benefits, and to have more control over their own working lives.”
The approximately 75 employees at the two facilities will be members of a single bargaining unit.
AUPE will begin the process of bargaining a first collective agreement for the employees as soon as possible, said Dale Perry, an AUPE Union Representative who works in the union’s Southern Alberta Regional Office in Lethbridge.
“As the representative for more than 1,000 Good Sam employees in Alberta, we were a natural fit for this group of employees,” he said. “We have experience with this employer and we are confident we can negotiate a comparable agreement to those at our other Good Sam worksites.”
AUPE is Alberta’s largest union, with more than 61,000 members province-wide. AUPE represents Good Sam continuing care employees in Edmonton, Spruce Grove, Hinton, Evansburg, Rocky Mountain House and Lethbridge.
For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-232-8392 (cellular phone)
Dale Perry, Union Representative, AUPE (Southern Alberta Regional Office, Lethbridge), 403-329-1294 or 403-308-4549 (cellular phone)
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)