Oxfam Canada and West Coast LEAF present

Powerful Voices: The Struggle for Women

CUPE BC has endorsed CKNW’s campaign to stop bullying in our schools, workplaces and in society.  CUPE does not often team with media in campaigns but this issue is of common concern for those who care about fairness for all and healthy communities.  Wear Pink on Wednesday, Feburary 27th and send a message: Bullying Stops Here.

CUPE offers several workshops on the subjects of bullying and harassment:

• Harassment


• Worksite Harassment


• Respect in the Workplace and Saying No to Harassment


• Respect in the Workplace


• Saying No to Harassment


• Bullying and Harassment

CUPE 391 has sent union contacts, grievance committee representatives and members to these courses.  If you feel that you would benefit from such training please call 604-322-4879.  Inder Pannu, Member-at-Large, is our Education chair.

From Barry O’Neil’s letter:

At work, personal harassment and bullying undermine the self-esteem and dignity of individuals and creates a hostile or offensive work environment.

Besides being destructive to worker health, it also has a negative impact on our ability to provide quality public services.”

Please bring your cameras to work on Wednesday February 27th and film your friends and colleagues looking smashing in pink.  CUPE BC wants your pictures and videos.

See http://www.cupe.bc.ca/stopbullying for further information, video and handouts.

in solidarity

Alex

CUPE Local 391 was not consulted in the booking of Greg Felton, author of the The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column consumed America, for the Freedom to Read week at Vancouver Public Library.  The Union does not endorse the event and would strongly condemn any anti-Semitic writings which constitute hate literature.

This author’s reading has sparked controversy among the reading community of Vancouver.  The following links address some of the stakeholders concerns around the significance and/or dangers inherent in legitimizing this event as a “freedom of speech” issue.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=
8f4a3c29-1ad4-43fc-bb49-b627feac1810&p=1

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6532761.html

http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2008/02/freedom-to-be-antisemitic-week-in.html

CUPE Local 391 confirms the union’s support of intellectual freedom.  The union invites members of the public to consider information available
about Felton’s writings and to think critically whether or not Felton’s views actually support freedom of speech or have hateful content.  If the public considers the material hateful (after having read it), they should consider not attending the event.

Quotes re: Free Speech, Conscience, Ignorance, Literature, Books, Political Correctness

“Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.”
Edward ABBEY
American writer (1927-1989)

“To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.”
Claude Adrien HELV

Sisters and Brothers,

Your temporary job share committee (Kristy Hennings , Nancy Wong and Jennifer
Caldwell) met on Wednesday night with members of the bargaining and executive
committees and one job sharing member. We reviewed the history of the letter
of understanding on job sharing, positions brought to the table in the last
round of bargaining, information from the ongoing job share committee and
input from the membership.

We will be collating all of this information along with research into other
union’s job sharing agreements.

We are hoping to meet with management relatively quickly so that we can
fit our work into the short time frame available. We will be attending the
March 19th general meeting and will report any updates to the membership at
that time.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us:
jennical@vpl.ca, kristhen@vpl.ca & nancywo1@vpl.ca.

In solidarity,

Kristy (Nancy and Jen).

--

On Wednesday, February 13, the board of the Greater Victoria Labour Relations Association met and voted to lock out Library workers and the people of the Capital Region whom CUPE Local 410 proudly serves; starting on Black Monday February 18, 2008.

Show our sisters and brothers of CUPE Local 410 that we care about them and their struggle for human rights: equal pay for work of equal value.  Your fight is ours, too.  Please take the time to read and reread 10 years Overdue:  Pay Equity at the Greater Victoria Public Library see

The Promise:
http://overduepromise.ca/timeline.html

The Greater Victoria Public Library workers story is our story, except they bargained contract language for pay equity.  The GVLRA avoided fulfilling their contractual obligations for a number of years.  The work of comparing library jobs to a male-dominated workforce occurred just before a grievance on the subject went to arbitration. The arbitration was avoided when the parties agreed to do a joint union/management study of the relationship of Library jobs to Victoria City jobs. The study was published in 2000 and established a mutually agreed upon relationship between jobs at the Library and jobs at the City of Victoria.

In the period between 1996-2000, funding was found by the municipality of Victoria to fully implement pay equity at the City. All the other locals involved in the original agreement achieves full funding and equal pay for work of equal value by 2004. But not for Library workers. If male/female ratios were calculated for all those other locals that achieved pay equity, how many would prove to be female-dominated workforces? Any?

CUPE 391 has tried to achieve pay equity through bargaining and it was messy.  Sometimes when you break new ground it is messy.  We tried other avenues and found ourselves in a labyrinth of dated ideas and misogynist values.  Fortunately our mess was a very creative one and has sparked debate.  The public now knows the issues around pay equity because we did what we always do - shared our research.  The credibility of men with six figure incomes proclaiming that there is no pay equity problem for library workers comes from the same school of logic that funds the new Translink meetings.  Baffling to the uninitiated.

We need a new game, folks, to explain these anomalies.  How about a distaff cousin of the game of Jeopardy?  “Know Your Politicians”.  Lets think up categories of questions and match them to our local politicians and trustees.  We can research the last ten or fifteen years to see what and how these guys have voted on issues.  That’ s one way to keep library workers busy while we are working towards achieving pay equity.  Because make no mistake, we will.  In the meantime…

CUPE 410 Library Workers Need Your Support!

VICTORIA