Strategic directions document
Introduction
- CUPE members continue to be under enormous pressure at work and in their communities. This is a direct result of the relentless push by governments, employers and the corporate sector to shrink the size, scope and strength of Canada’s public sector. As well, CUPE members in the private communications and airline sectors are being dramatically impacted by job cuts and a fierce attack on collective agreement rights. This corporate restructuring has been facilitated by government moves to deregulate key parts of Canada’s economy.
- Our members experience the pressure in many ways: job and service cuts as a result of contracting out and privatization; forced collective agreement concessions, particularly in the area of benefits; work burnout and stress as a result of being forced to do double and sometimes triple duty because staffing levels have not kept pace with the demands of the public for increased service.
- As our members suffer, so too does the quality of life for all Canadians. Our union is also under considerable pressure. Winning real material gains for our members is more difficult. The number of grievances that we must file to protect our negotiated rights is on the rise. Our members sometime expect more than we can deliver and this leads to frustration at all levels of the union.
- In the last decade, we have won significant victories at the bargaining table, in our workplaces, in our communities, in the courts, and in the legislatures. We have done an excellent job of defending our members given the economic, social and political context. We have had success because our union has taken important steps to resist contract concessions and to build membership power from the bottom up.
- However, we are up against powerful forces when it comes to advancing the interests of working people. We are getting stronger each day with every fightback campaign and every round of bargaining, but so too are the forces working against us. We have to accept that the fight for good collective agreements, for justice and for equality is going to be a long one and we have to be very strategic in how we keep fighting so that we continue to get stronger, not weaker.
- Our union is already pointed in the right direction. We have passed excellent policies and action plans that call on our union to take militant action on a number of different fronts. Our union will continue to carry out these plans that include fighting for equality, working with community coalitions, strengthening our health and safety work, and carrying out effective political campaigns.
- But over the next two years it is critical that we give special attention to three specific challenges facing us at this particular point in time:
- strengthening our bargaining power;
- increasing the day-to-day effectiveness of our union, particularly at the base; and
- intensifying our fight against contracting out and privatization, particularly by moving from a defensive to an offensive strategy.
- The point of this document is not to restate all our existing union policies and everything that we have agreed to do at previous conventions. This document assumes that we will continue to be guided by past decisions and concentrates on the specific strategic initiatives that CUPE will undertake in the coming two years so that we can better focus on the three challenges identified above.
