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.

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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

CUPE Local 2669 President Dolores Douglass speaks to reporters at a press conference at The Stand in Saskatoon.

The Saskatoon Public Library is attempting to remove 28 employees with supervisory duties from CUPE Local 2669. It is one of the first employers in the province to aggressively seek to use new provisions under The Saskatchewan Employment Act (SEA), which comes into effect in exactly one month.

The employer has met with members with supervisory duties to inform them they are seeking their removal from the bargaining unit. To this date no details about rationale or details about how this will impact workers have been released.

“Their announcement is creating a lot of stress and uncertainty for our members,” said Dolores Douglas, president of the local. “People are worried about job security, about their benefits and wages and what the future holds.”

Unions and employers have until April 29, 2016 to sign a status quo agreement called an irrevocable election. After that date, and any time in the future, employers may apply to the Labour Relations Board for an order removing supervisors from the bargaining units and unions of their choice of which they have chosen to be a part. Many major employers in the province have already signed irrevocable agreements, including the Ministry of Health, SAHO, and the Government of Saskatchewan.

“This decision is baffling. There is no credible rationale for moving forward with this,” added Douglas. “The library struggles with funding and resourcing as it is – Why is a publicly funded, civic employer wasting time and resources to weaken the bargaining unit and undermine job security?”

“Working people have the right to belong to the union of their choosing. CUPE will fight any employer who moves forward with attempting to exclude supervisory members with every tool in our tool box – including legal avenues,” said Tom Graham, president of CUPE Saskatchewan. “We are in the midst of an election. Any government that wants the support of unionized workers should consider the outcome of our recent charter challenge and immediately repeal the Sask. Party’s regressive labour legislation.”

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On April 4^th, there is a provincial election. Who gets elected matters.

The next provincial government will make important decisions about funding for education, health care, community-based organizations, and social services. They will decide on the future of our public services and Crown Corporations. They will decide if the province puts working families first – or prioritizes out-of-province corporations.

You deserve a say on these issues.

Public services and jobs

• In Saskatchewan we believe everyone should have access to services they need, no matter where they live or how much they earn.
• That is why we created strong Public Services and Crown Corporations that serve everyone while providing safer, higher-paying union jobs. But the Sask Party government is selling off parts of our Crown Corporations and dismantling our public services.
• Schools, hospitals and roads are being privatized under the costly P3 model. The P3 Regina bypass has a whopping $1.9-billion price tag!
• Private ownership and control transfers public resources into private profits
• 300 CUPE health care laundry workers across Saskatchewan lost their jobs last year when the government privatized hospital laundry services and handed the contract to an Alberta company. Correctional food services have also been handed over to a private corporation that also pays workers less and cuts corners. Our profitable liquor stores could be next. They’re allowing private MRI clinics, so people can pay extra to jump the queue. And now CT scans are set to be privatized, too.
• We deserve strong public services that are accessible to everyone. We need to invest in health care to reduce wait times and develop a world-class seniors’ care system. We need to build more schools and ensure adequate supports in the classroom. We need elected representatives who will protect our Crowns and public services – so they are still here for our children and grandchildren.

Your rights as a worker

• The Sask Party government has shown that they are not a friend to working people. They have overhauled labour laws to take away workers’ rights through the Saskatchewan Employment Act (2014) and the Public Service Essential Services Act (2008).
• In 2008, the Public Service Essential Services Act put unjust limits on which public sector workers could go on strike, fundamentally undermining the ability to bargain fair collective agreements. It was such bad legislation that the Supreme Court of Canada struck it down for violating workers’ Charter right to freedom of association.

The economy and your paycheque

• After a decade-long resource boom, why are so many people struggling to make ends meet today? Costs are rising, services are being cut, and wages are not keeping pace.
• Utilities, tuition fees, seniors’ care, healthcare supplies – the list of rising costs goes on and on. In the last three years Sask Power rates alone have gone up more than 15 per cent.
• Chronic underfunding of public services means that front line workers get less. When the government is wasting millions on out-of-province consultants, it becomes harder for workers to secure fair settlements. The Sask Party has more than doubled spending on consultants to over $120 million a year.
• We need elected representatives who will put the needs of working families first – and fight for everyone, not just bosses and private corporations.

Please pledge to vote for a candidate who listens by clicking HERE.

Information on how and where to vote at Elections Saskatchewan.

The United Nations has declared that water and sanitation are human rights. Yet many Indigenous communities are deprived of their human right to water. Communities lack adequate sanitation, sewage treatment and drinking water services. And many communities face health and economic problems because of industrial exploitation.

CUPE works in solidarity with aboriginal organizations, environmental groups and workers to defend human rights, defend the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, strengthen the union movement, and resist privatization and cutbacks.

Two-thirds of all First Nation communities in Canada have been under at least one drinking water advisory at some time in the last decade. According to Health Canada there are currently 131 Drinking Water Advisories in effect in 87 First Nation communities across Canada, excluding British Columbia.

With the Assembly of First Nations and the Water Solidarity Network, CUPE will hold the federal government accountable to its promise of ending boil water advisories in Indigenous communities within five years. 

Read more at CUPE’s national website 

The Saskatchewan Federation of Labour (SFL) Young Workers’ Conference is an opportunity for young trade unionists from across the province to come together to learn about issues affecting workers, develop new skills, and strategize about how to make our unions and labour movement even stronger.

Download the application form and apply today.