Minutes - Pay and Social Equity Committee
AUPE Headquarters, Edmonton
Attendees:
Erez Raz – Chair
Garry Ritchie – Local 003
Peggy Martin – Local 046
Peggy Stewart – Life Member
Carmen MacRae – Local 001 (minutes)
Susan Slade – Local 045
Rhonda Chatman – Local 071
Debbie Kay – Staff Advisor
New business
Debbie advised us that Susan will not be returning to her role with AUPE . We will send a card and get well basket on behalf of the committee. Arrangements will be made with Ashley to have the basket delivered. Motion: That a wellness basket be purchased in an amount not to exceed $75.00. M/S/C
We would like to update the Pay and Social Equity Committee website with a Frequently Asked Questions section. A draft document was distributed with proposed FAQs for posting to the website.
Peggy has prepared a new position statement and has distributed it to the group for review. A motion was made to use the document as distributed as the Pay and Social Equity Committee’s position statement on Pay and Social Equity.
Business arising from previous minutes
To date, we have had no response from the President with respect to the Pay and Social Equity Committee’s letter in which a request was made to conduct an investigation into the actions of the Executive Director at the last convention.
Peggy has offered to prepare a list of potential participants to a pay equity collation and forward to the Chair for him to draft a letter to distribute to invite the groups to get together to work jointly on the issue.
Meeting adjourned as members volunteered their services at Edmonton’s Mustard Seed from 3:00 until 9:00 pm.
Day Two
Reviewed events at the Mustard Seed last night. Very well organized. Good size kitchen made it easy to work in. Had just enough volunteers – any more might have made it harder to move around. Special thanks to Garry for doing the dishes! Committee members served 325 plates and donated over 200 blankets, coats and socks during a six hour period. In order to collect raw footage to realize our goal mandated by 2008 Convention to create a DVD on pay and social equity issues, Viacom was there taking footage. Big thank you to the blanket shoppers as well. Consensus was to do it again – perhaps in Calgary in September 2009. Thank you letters will be provided to Locals 001, 003, 005, 043, 046 and 071 that donated to the cause. The request for donations was made at the February Provincial Executive meeting during the Pay and Social Equity Committee report.
Some fun ideas for the September 2009 Pay and Social Equity Committee / Anti-Privatization Conference:
- Treasure hunt
- Bingo
- Word search puzzles / crosswords
- Door prizes
- Organized evening function
- September 17 – Evening session only – registration, dinner, joint speaker, etc.
- September 18 – All day session – break offs, speakers, morning for pay equity, afternoon for social justice
- September 19 – Should be plenary session with departure at noon
- Potential speakers: PSAC, elected labour friendly officials, PIA, GEA, possible coalition groups.
- Need to confirm with Education Department that buses are booked and that the last day of the conference will be September 19, 2009.
The Chair will send an invitation to the Public Service Alliance of Canada to attend an upcoming meeting to provide information on work being done by PSAC as it relates to the new Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act.
Next meeting: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 9:30 am, AUPE Headquarters.
Meeting adjourned at 2:00 pm.