Thank you to all 31,000 CUPE members on the frontline delivering public services across Saskatchewan that provide care, enrich people’s lives, and strengthen our communities. To the many CUPE members on the frontline caring for us and keeping our public services going through the holidays – Thank You! On behalf of the Executive Board and staff of CUPE Saskatchewan, we wish everyone a safe holiday season and a happy, healthy new year.
As 2023 draws to a close, we reflect on a year of action for pay justice and sounding the alarm on the Sask. Party government’s deliberate underfunding and privatization of public services that are negatively impacting students, patients, communities, and the dedicated workers on the frontline of our public services.
Members of CUPE Local 882, the inside city workers of Prince Albert, showed their courage and resolve to fight for pay justice with the strike concluding on December 11, after 85 days on strike. When workers stand united in solidarity for justice and stronger public services, we can make the next year brighter. We extend our solidarity to all workers striking and braving lockouts in their courageous efforts to secure more justice and fairness. Their courage and resolve makes progress for all workers.
This is a critical moment for public service workers across the province to make progress, secure real wage increases, and demand fair funding for public services.
CUPE members are on the frontline of our public services, and we must take more action to defend them at the bargaining table and in our communities.
Read the full year-end message:
Dedicated public service workers have had enough and will not stand by and watch our public education system, health care system, and so many other important public services suffer further from inadequate funding. Saskatchewan people and communities deserve better, and we must all defend our public services together from Sask. Party mismanagement. Our public services, long starved of funds, need urgent and improved investment to serve the people of Saskatchewan and deliver the accessible, quality services everyone deserves.
With a growing affordability crisis driven by excess corporate profit and made worse by government inaction, all workers must join together and organize to demand living wages, access to affordable housing and essentials, and to demand a society and economy that leaves no one behind. Saskatchewan still has the woeful distinction of having the lowest minimum wage in Canada.
As a new year dawns, let us recommit to organize and mobilize to push forward for more fairness, call for an end to privatization and cuts to public services, rally together for better pay and living wages, and demand a more just and fair economy that puts people and the well-being of our community before all else.
Workers, united, can make a better world possible! Solidarity!
In solidarity,
CUPE Saskatchewan Executive Board & Staff
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