CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) Saskatchewan along with CUPE Locals 882, 4195 and 1975 hosted a free barbecue at Kinsmen Park on Saturday.
Kent Peterson the President of CUPE Saskatchewan said the event was a way to engage with the community.
“We call ourselves the community union because we have members that work in public services all over the province including thousands in and around Prince Albert,” Peterson said.
“This is all about engaging with the folks that we provide public services to every day and giving back a little bit.”
The union was also collecting signatures on a petition for worker’s mental health and violence in the workplace.
“We always take the opportunity to educate folks about different things that are going on, so we also have an opportunity to talk to people about violence in workplaces, how to create safety for people and places,” Peterson said.
He said the petition was for everyone because the subject is something that affects everyone.
“It affects our members, but also affects workers that don’t have a union,” Peterson explained. “We’re fighting for safe workplaces for everybody, and so we want to have an opportunity to engage those people too.”
Earlier this summer a similar barbecue in Saskatoon served over 1,000 people. However, Peterson said they wanted to get outside of Saskatchewan’s two largest centres.
“We’re in big cities and also the small communities too,” he explained. “We believe, we’re a provincial union and so we think that no matter how big or small the community you live in, we want to engage with you, so it’s been great.”
CUPE Local 1975 represents the University of Saskatchewan employees including those at the Prince Albert Campus. CUPE Local 4195 represent CUPE employees in the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division and CUPE Local 882 represents inside workers with the City of Prince Albert. In 2023 CUPE 882 had the first CUPE job action in over 12 years, and the first strike in CUPE Local 882’s 70-year history.
Volunteers from all of the unions were in attendance to work at the barbecue.
Cheryl Clayton was elected President on CUPE 882 the City Hall inside workers Union in 2024 and said that she has learned a lot because she was not on committees or the executive before her election.
“We had that strike in 2023 and then we came back and our executive were all tired and the last president (Tammy Vermette) had been there for, I think she was on for about 13 years,” Clayton said.
After Vermentt stepped down Clayton was nominated in January 2024.
“I was pretty much thrown right into the fire after the strike and trying to navigate everything and how this all works. You had to learn quick and it was a lot, but I actually have found myself very much enjoying learning everything about more like labour law and more,” Clayton said.
Clayton explained that part of the learning curve required her to be more hands on.
“I do like connecting with the members and being able to be there for them when they have questions,” she said.
She said that membership had been disconnected in the past and members did not have knowledge of some of their rights. Clayton said that 2023 strike helped to bring those rights into focus.
“There were some good things to come out of it, we definitely became a more connected membership. It’s like people started to realize we have this collective agreement for a reason. We had members who I guarantee you had never even opened it before. They didn’t even know what was bargained for them.”
Clayton said that the excellent turnout was great to see. While organizing it she was not sure how much food (hamburgers and hot dogs) to bring for the barbecue.
“This is our first barbecue we’ve done with CUPE It’s really hard to predict how many people are going to come, but it’s great to see everybody show up. We did make sure it got posted on like the city’s event page,” Clayton said.
She posted the poster on Prince Albert related Facebook pages and the CUPE 882 Facebook page to help bring people to Kinsmen Park.
“We like to do this to engage the community. We wanted to make sure like there’s. we find there’s a lot of sometimes misinformation or disconnect between unionized workers, non-
unionized workers, the community and stuff. We’re definitely here to support the community all the time.”
Clayton said that CUPE likes to be out to support events like Pride and National Indigenous People’s Day as just a few examples.
“We just want the community to come out, get to know us,” Clayton said. “We like to support them. We appreciate their support whenever we have that as well.”
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
