CUPE is a leader in advancing human rights at the bargaining table. We bargain gains for marginalized workers – women, persons with disabilities, Black and racialized, 2SLGBTQ+ and Indigenous workers – that ultimately build all members’ power.
Some collective agreement language addresses discrimination directly - for example, employment equity and duty to accommodate. Other language advances human rights by applying an equality lens to broader issues, like pensions and health & safety, where marginalized workers face additional challenges.
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Guide
Truth & reconciliation bargaining guide
CUPE is committed to ensuring locals have access to resources that support the union’s work on truth and reconciliation. One of the ways CUPE locals can support reconciliation is by bargaining language supporting Indigenous workers into collective agreements. Our new guide, Truth and reconciliation: CUPE taking action through collective bargaining, is for everyone who wants to put reconciliation into action at the bargaining table.
Guide
Domestic violence and the workplace: A bargaining guide
This document is for local union officers, bargaining committee members and other activists who want to prevent domestic violence at work and support members who face domestic violence.
Resources
HIV and AIDS Bargaining checklist
The HIV and AIDS bargaining checklist is a resource tool for local unions, bargaining committees, members and other activists to support those infected and affected by HIV and AIDS.
Fact sheet
Disability rights: fact sheet on bargaining
Your local union has a key role to play in supporting disability rights, including the right to be accommodated at work. Your union can take a number of steps to ensure that all members understand their workplace rights and employers’ obligations relating to a disability.
Resources
Discrimination: A checklist and sample collective agreement language
This document provides a checklist and examples of collective agreement language on discrimination.
Resources
Overview of collective agreement language on equality
CUPE is a leader in advancing human rights at the bargaining table. We bargain gains for marginalized workers – women, persons with disabilities and racialized, LGBTTI and Aboriginal workers – that ultimately build all members’ power.
Resources
Closing the wage gap: pay equity
Unions work to increase wage fairness and to eliminate income inequalities. We challenge discrimination in all its forms.
Resources
Employment equity: a workplace that reflects the community
Many of our workplaces do not reflect the diversity of the communities we live in. Groups that are traditionally underrepresented include women, workers of colour, Aboriginal workers, workers with disabilities, and LGBTTI workers.
Resources
Bargaining 2SLGBTQI+ rights: A checklist for collective agreement language
This document provides a checklist of ways to advance the rights of Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex (2SLGBTQI+) workers through your collective agreement.
Resources
Duty to accommodate: A checklist for collective agreement language
This document provides a checklist of ways to advance accommodation rights through the collective agreement.
Bargaining Women's Equality - Recipes for Setting the Table
To achieve equality we need all of the ingredients: wages, benefits, provisions for work/life balance, job protection, and safe workplaces. There is a direct link, for example, between pay equity provisions and women’s pension benefits, because good pension benefits are dependent on better wages for women.
Guide
Protecting our work from privatization: How to fight contracting out at the bargaining table
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is at the forefront of the fight against the privatization of public services and has been since our union was founded in 1963. The collective power of CUPE members is our best defence against privatization, and CUPE collective agreements are a powerful tool in that fight. When CUPE members organize to achieve, and strictly enforce, contract language that prevents or restricts our employers from contracting out work, we can protect public sector union jobs and public services. CUPE collective agreements are far more likely than other union contracts to have some type of protection against contracting out. CUPE locals regularly use their collective agreement language to stop privatization in its tracks.