- Rallies in Vancouver and Surrey -
BURNABY, BC - Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley will be off the job on Friday, October 21st if there is no resolution to the teachers’ dispute.
Rallies, hosted by CUPE BC president Barry O’Neill, will be held at the PNE in Vancouver and at Stetson Bowl in Cloverdale. CUPE national president Paul Moist, BCTF president Jinny Sims and Hospital Employees’ Union secretary-business manager Judy Darcy will join O’Neill at the rallies. The Vancouver PNE rally is from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and the Surrey Stetson Bowl rally is from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
O’Neill says he expects Friday’s protest to be as successful as those throughout this week in other regions of the province where CUPE members who work in municipalities, libraries, universities and colleges, recreation and other areas walked off the job in protest. He also said that during Friday’s protest necessary services will be maintained and CUPE transit workers will remain on the job so that transit services will not be disrupted.
“Because 25,000 CUPE school support workers have been out with the teachers from the first day of the teachers’ political protest against Bill 12, CUPE members have felt this dispute very directly. As of Friday, the other 45,000 members of CUPE in every region of B.C. will have had a chance to show solidarity with their CUPE colleagues and teachers,” said O’Neill.
CUPE has 70,000 members in B.C. There are approximately 40,000 CUPE members in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley.
For more information:
Roseanne Moran
CUPE communications
(778) 835-7537
Louise Leclair
CUPE communications
(778) 228-209