Apr 01, 2021
Privatizing the University of Calgary bookstore is bad news all around
News article summary (meta description)
It will hurt students, cost jobs and damage the university’s business reputation
Welcome, member.
Sign in to view your personalized contact directory and collective bargaining agreements, and view and update your member profile.
New to MyAUPE? Create your account.
Create your account.
Create an account to view your personalized contact directory and collective bargaining agreements, and view and update your member profile.
Already have an account? Sign in.
You can contact the AUPE Anti-Privatization Committee by email at antiprivatization@aupe.ca
Kevin Barry
Laurie Shannon
Lynda Broomfield
Jeramy Paananen
Nancy Burton
Ramza Gebran
Toni Zatorski
Garry Sran
Ellen Anthony
Apr 01, 2021
Mar 24, 2021
Click here to fill out our anti-privatization reporting form to report any rumours, notices, and talks of privatization at your worksite.
You can contact the AUPE Anti-Privatization Committee by email at antiprivatization@aupe.ca
Please refer to this contact sheet to obtain the name of the contact assigned to your Local.
Your Anti-privatization committee is encouraging all AUPE members and their families to write to the Premier of Alberta to bring all seniors' care under the public umbrella of services. We have all seen what the pandemic has done to our loved ones who may be utilizing the senior services not only in this province but in the country as well. It is time to stop making our senior community a commodity for profit. It is shameful that this government is planning to sell it’s remaining public seniors facilities to the for profit private sector.
Please take a moment of your time and send this letter to the Premier and the Health Minister to ask them to stop their reckless decisions and make all seniors' care public:
Office of the Premier
307 Legislature Building 10800 - 97 Avenue Edmonton, Alberta T5K 2B6
E-mail: premier@gov.ab.ca
Minister of Health
423 Legislature Building 10800 - 97 Avenue Edmonton, AB T5K 2B6
E-mail: health.minister@gov.ab.ca
AUPE’s Constitution sets out the duties of the Anti-privatization Committee as follows:
The Anti-privatization Committee shall:
Anti-privatization Sub-Committee Protocols
MYTH 1: The public sector leads to inefficiencies and waste, with no incentive to keep costs down or to improve services as its monopoly grows.
FACT 1: The public sector can provide far better service with true accountability to citizens, unlike what the private sector provides. Often times, private sector companies created by privatization grow to push their competition out. This leads to large monopolies that charge anything they want with no accountability to Canadians.
MYTH 2: Competition among private companies for public contracts will drive prices down because they’ll be forced to find cheaper ways to provide services.
FACT 2: There’s one easy way to drive prices down: Cut wages and lay off staff, which only means service goes down despite what privatization supporters say. Private companies will add extra fees on to everything to make money. At the end of the day, taxpayers will still have to pay the bill.
MYTH 3: The lack of competition in the public sector stifles innovation. Decisions are made based on the way things are usually done or who has political clout, not on the basis if improving service delivery.
FACT 3: There’s one good reason for government to be more careful and deliberate in its decision-making process. Taxpayers insist on it. Taxpayers are the ultimate boss in government and they demand long lists of exhaustive regulations be followed by public entities. This is not true for the private sector, where backroom deals about privatized services can be made with no public input or voter accountability.
MYTH 4: Workers in the private sector are more motivated than workers in the public sector. The sense of winning in competition boosts worker pride and morale. They feel rewarded by their hard work when their firm is awarded a contract.
FACT 4: Contacting companies pay employees low wages, often without benefits as a method to maximize profits. This hardly results in high employee morale. More often the results are high employee turnover, inadequate training, and poor overall workplace performance.
MYTH 5: Private firms can take advantage of economies of scale by spreading costs over several smaller municipalities that they have contracted with.
FACT 5: A private firm using the economies of scale principle, meaning its average cost of production falls when it increases its scale of operations, wants to become a monopoly producer to drive out competition and eventually jack up prices. It’s a classic case of private-sector hypocrisy where they criticize what they eventually want to be.
But there’s a difference between public-sector services and ever-growing private-sector monopolies. The public sector won’t gouge citizens because it is accountable to Alberta taxpayers rather than shareholders. Governments enjoy the same economies of scale as private corporations by joining forces to making purchases together. Few private companies compare with the Government of Alberta’s ability to demand the lowest price because of large volume purchasing power.
Updated January 2020
Order print materials through AUPE by completing the order form.