Warning message

Please note that this page is from our archives. There may be more up-to-date content about this topic on our website. Use our search engine to find out.

Calgary - The 374 employees who work at the Banff Centre for the Arts voted 79% in favour of merging their Association with the Canadian Union of Public Employees. As the economy has been restructured, employees have been merging together to create larger resource bases from which to fight for fairness and respect at work sites across Canada. CUPE is Canada’s largest union with over 460,000 members.

“CUPE is very pleased to welcome the members of the Association of the Banff Centre Support Employees to CUPE,” said Terry Mutton, General Vice President of CUPE. “The members of this Association bring skills and experience that can only make our national union stronger in our fight to ensure that all employees are treated fairly and with respect.”

Jason Pratt, the President of the Banff Centre Association said that they chose CUPE because of its reputation for ensuring that its members had the resources they needed.

“We were also impressed by CUPE’s dedication to local democracy autonomy,” said Pratt. “It’s very important to our members that we make the decisions on bargaining for our work site. With CUPE we can have the best of both worlds, the resources and skills of a large national union with decisions still being made here by our members.”

The Banff employees work in all of the four areas of the Banff Centre, art, management, conferences and mountain culture. The members work in areas such as hospitality, technical, arts and conference services.

The new members in Banff will be CUPE Local 4318, Banff Centre Support Employees. The merger must be approved by the Alberta Labour Relations Board. No dates have yet been set for these hearings.