Alberta Union of Provincial Employees
 |
|
| Founded | 1977 |
|---|---|
| Members | 81,000 |
| Key people |
Guy Smith (President) Jason Heistad (Executive Secretary-Treasurer) |
| Office location | Edmonton, Alberta, Canada |
| Country | Canada |
| Website | [4] |
The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees is a Canadian trade union operating solely in the province of Alberta. With approximately 81,000 members as of December 2013, it is Alberta’s largest union.
Most of AUPE’s members are employed in the public sector. AUPE divides its membership into four sectors for administrative purposes: Direct employees of the government of Alberta, with approximately 22,000 members; employees of health care providers, including Alberta Health Services, as well as other public, private and not-for-profit facilities, with more than 46,000 members; school boards and post-secondary educational institutions, more than 9,000 members; and government boards and agencies, plus municipal governments, more than 3,000 members. (AUPE also represents the employees of one private company, a former government of Alberta agency.)
The vast majority of AUPE’s members come under one of two pieces of legislation, the Alberta Labour Relations Code and the Public Service Employees Relations Act. One small unit comes under federal Canadian labour legislation.
As of 2014, AUPE has 33 locals and administers more than 120 separate collective agreements. The union has a staff of more than 100 employees at its headquarters in Edmonton and at several regional offices located in communities throughout the province of Alberta, including Peace River, Grande Prairie, Athabasca, Camrose, Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge.
AUPE had its origins in the Civil Service Association of Alberta, founded in 1919 to represent “civil servants,” as direct employees of the Alberta government were then known. It became a legal union with the power to bargain collectively in 1977.
In the mid-1990s, AUPE saw its membership plummet and suffered severe financial stress because of the extreme policies of the provincial government led by Premier Ralph Klein, which emphasized privatization of government services. Membership fell to about 35,000 in 1995. However, under the leadership of Dan MacLennan, a Calgary jail guard who was elected in 1997, AUPE rebuilt itself and saw its membership soar past 60,000. MacLennan’s efforts were aided by increasing moderation in the policies of the Klein government in the years after the cuts of the mid-1990s, as well as by rapid economic and population growth in the province of Alberta.
...
Wikipedia