Update: Registration for this event is now full but interested individuals may contact us to be put on a waiting list should anyone withdraw their registration.

The CUPE Saskatchewan canoe trip coincides with the Back to Batoche celebrations of the Métis Nation in Saskatchewan.

During this annual voyage, participants navigate the waters of the South Saskatchewan River by canoe beginning at Clarkboro Ferry crossing (formerly Warman Ferry crossing) and arriving at the historic Métis community of Batoche – learning about Aboriginal culture, history, and traditions along the way.

NO CANOE EXPERIENCE NECESSARY!

EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE: June 17, 2016

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In the wake of a bargaining impasse, the Government of Saskatchewan announced a new round of sweeping layoff notices this week to CUPE Local 600 members working at Valley View Centre.

The Government of Saskatchewan served notice to terminate the employment of 36 employees in several different classifications, including nursing, dietary, housekeeping, and scheduling staff. In total, 24 permanent full time, nine permanent part time, and three term employees were served with layoff notices. Since the announcement of the closure of Valley View Centre, a total of 80 positions have been eliminated. Only one term out-of-scope position has been eliminated during this time.

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INAC Protest Camp at 1827 Albert Street, Regina

Regina – Protesters camped outside the offices of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC) in Regina got some material support from the labour movement on Wednesday afternoon when a large festival tent was set up on site by CUPE Saskatchewan.

The tent was a response to a request from the union’s own Aboriginal Council. The protesters have been camped outside INAC’s regional offices since April 18 in conjunction with occupations of INAC offices across Canada in response to the crises of youth suicides in Attawapiskat and the terrible conditions in many First Nations communities across Canada.

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Photo: Flickr/iwishmynamewasmarsha

Across Saskatchewan and Canada today people will light candles, don ribbons and remember colleagues, friends and family who have been killed because of workplace-related hazards and incidents. A list of Day of Mourning events today in Saskatchewan can be found HERE. CUPE Saskatchewan will be laying wreaths in ceremonies in Saskatoon, Regina, Moose Jaw, and Yorkton.

Last week CUPE Saskatchewan held its annual Occupational Health and Safety Conference and members are encouraged to look at CUPE’s new Health and Safety Learning Series.

We can’t bring back those who have died, but we are working hard to make workplaces safer today. That’s why Canadian unions including CUPE are calling for a national ban on asbestos, a known killer that causes disease, suffering and death — all of it preventable.

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Moose Jaw — CUPE Local 5512 is saddened and disappointed by Prairie South School District’s decision to lay off 25 school assistants working at nine schools in Moose Jaw.

“Our members care passionately about the work they do and the children they watch over. The loss of these jobs is so devastating because of how much heart our members put into their jobs,” said Trish Mula, president of CUPE Local 5512. “This decision is about Prairie South’s financial situation, but it is the students who are going to end up paying the price.”

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Today is Earth Day. We can all do our part. This could be the time to start greening your workplace with ideas like energy conservation, car pooling, recycling, or reducing waste. CUPE has produced a fact sheet if you want to set up an environment committee in your workplace.

CUPE also wants to encourage and promote existing green practices in our locals’ workplaces. You may submit your local for our 2016 Earth Day contest. Deadline is May 6.

Show your support for City of Moose Jaw Workers during a tough round of bargaining and bring the family down for a FREE Barbecue. Event is open to the public.Come by the park for a free burger!

Workers at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, members of Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 5791, have voted 100 per cent in favour of a strike mandate.

“The employer brought forward a large regressive proposal package to the table, which is lowering staff morale and causing stress for the members,” said Jamie Mellor, president of Local 5791.

“Historically, CUPE Local 5791 has been very reasonable at the bargaining table and has been considerate of the MacKenzie’s financial challenges. We continue to be reasonable in this round, but the employer’s approach is making progress difficult,” added Mellor.  “It is disappointing to see this behaviour after so many years of amicable labour relations and negotiations.”

The employer has hired an outside consultant and has proposed many concessions to the collective agreement.  These concessions include eliminating severance pay while at the same time issuing lay-off notices to two employees and suggesting that there may be more lay-offs.  Other proposals include eliminating employees’ ability to manage their work within flexible hours that meet their personal needs as well as the gallery’s needs. In addition, the MacKenzie Art Gallery is attempting to remove five full-time positions with supervisory duties from the bargaining unit and is seeking to reduce vacation entitlements for employees hired after April 1, 2016.

“Employees of the MacKenzie Art Gallery have always worked as a dedicated team, producing high quality arts programming for the public.  This work often requires employees to be flexible and generous with their time in order to meet deadlines and to address unanticipated events,” said Marie Olinik, a CUPE Local 5791 MacKenzie Art Gallery bargaining unit member.  “Hours of work has been a particularly contentious issue at this round of bargaining.  It’s our view that the employer’s proposals would actually harm gallery operations and increase costs.”

“We will continue to attempt to reach a negotiated agreement, but the management at the Mackenzie Art Gallery needs to know that our members have strong concerns with the concessions it is trying to push,” said Mellor.

Members of CUPE Local 5791 have been without a contract since March 31, 2015.

In March, delegates at CUPE Saskatchewan’s 51^st Annual Convention passed a resolution calling for the CUPE Division to write a letter to each of Saskatchewan’s major political parties to investigate their policies on post-secondary tuition in advance of the April 4^th election.

For context, Saskatchewan has the second-highest tuition fees in Canada after Ontario. Tuition in Saskatchewan has risen a whopping 34 per cent since the Saskatchewan Party formed government, despite the resource boom experienced during this same period.

We sent letters to the Green Party, Liberal Party, New Democratic Party, Saskatchewan Party, and Progressive Conservative Party and asked the following three questions in each letter:

If elected to government will your party:

1. Immediately freeze tuition fees for post-secondary education?
2. Increase funding for post-secondary education?
3. Immediately begin work to create a system of universality for post-secondary education, toward a goal of zero tuition fees?

Given the slim resources of the opposition parties and the frantic workload of election campaigning, it is perhaps not surprising that we have yet to receive replies to our letters. We also did not get a response from the governing Saskatchewan Party.

Reviewing the party platforms, we find that the Green Party pledges to eliminate tuition fees entirely, the New Democratic Party pledges to make post-secondary education more affordable through a number of initiatives while increasing post-secondary funding, and the Liberal platform promises more stable funding and lower interest rates on loans. The Progressive Conservative Party appears to have no education policy at all, based on the platform on their website.

The resolution passed by CUPE Saskatchewan members in March states that education is a right, that access should not depend on one’s finances, and that the Saskatchewan Party government has underfunded post-secondary education while dramatically driving up tuition fees for Saskatchewan students.

Students and workers of all ages in Saskatchewan deserve much better.

/cope342

The Canadian Union of Public Employees, representing 30,000 workers in Saskatchewan, stands with the Canadian Health Coalition, Canadian Doctors for Medicare, and the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses in opposing the Saskatchewan Party’s recently announced plans to expand privatization of diagnostic imaging from MRIs to CT scans.

“We know that Saskatchewan people – like all Canadians – cherish public health care as one of the great social advances of the 20th century. Yet the current Saskatchewan government appears determined to incrementally dismantle our public health care system and replace it with a for-profit, two-tier system,” says CUPE Saskatchewan President Tom Graham.

Last year, a legal opinion commissioned by CUPE found that the Saskatchewan government’s legislation ushering in private, for-profit MRI clinics violates the Canada Health Act. Federal Minister of Health Jane Philpott is currently reviewing the legislation to assess its compliance with the Act.

The Saskatchewan Party government claims that privatization is the answer for reducing wait times, but this contradicts evidence and expert opinion while striking at the foundational principle of Medicare: equal access to health care based on need rather than private wealth.

As has been shown with private, user-pay MRI clinics in other Canadian provinces, private CT scan services will:

• Permit queue-jumping
• Increase existing inequities in the current system
• Poach workers from the public sector
• Fail to reduce public wait times
• Increase public health costs

The reason for these outcomes is that private user-pay clinics and services primarily exist to maximize profits for their investors. Profit inserts misaligned incentives into health care, corroding the entire sector while actually driving up public costs.

“Where there are limitations within our existing capacity, the answer is simply to increase that capacity within the public system,” says Graham. “There is no evidence to suggest that these privatization schemes improve health care delivery or reduce costs – and there’s really a lot of evidence showing the opposite.”

“These privatization initiatives in health care are driven by ideology and not best practices or the public good,” says Gordon Campbell, President of the CUPE Health Care Council, which represents 13,600 Saskatchewan health care workers. “Investing in public health care is the simple, proven solution.”

As Saskatchewan voters head to the polls for the April 4th provincial election, the Saskatchewan Party’s escalating privatization schemes cast serious doubt on the government’s commitment to universal public health care.

/cope342