Library Workers: The heart and soul of library month

October is Library Month in Canada, and there is truly so much to celebrate. Libraries protect knowledge, promote literacy and creative writing, archive important texts, and support learning. They do all this as part of a free public service, a model based on the principle that access to knowledge and learning should be available to […]

CUPE BC gears up to support proportional representation

BURNABY – Last night, CUPE BC hosted two telephone townhalls for CUPE members in B.C. to talk about the provincial referendum on proportional representation. A significant majority of participants in both townhalls indicated that they support moving to proportional representation. “With a membership of more than 92,000 people, we had to put on two separate […]

Surrey Librarians vote to join CUPE

SURREY – Professional Librarians at Surrey Public Library have voted to become CUPE members in a Labour Board vote held on Wednesday. Issues important to professional librarians included organizational change that impacts services to the public and having a voice at work. “We warmly welcome professional librarians to our union, especially since October is National […]

CUPE BC Statement on Persons Day

Today is Persons Day in Canada, a day to commemorate the 1929 legal decision that finally gave Canadian women the right to vote. Two years earlier, five Canadian women who became known as the “Famous Five”– Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards—filed a legal challenge against the provisions of […]

A model for fairness

Why I’m voting ‘Yes’ for proportional representation Sometimes it seems like there’s an election on the horizon every time I sit down to write my column for Public Employee, and this issue is no exception. Not only do we have local elections in every community in the province within days of this magazine arriving in […]

CUPE BC Submission to B.C.’s 2018 Pre-Budget Consultations

CUPE BC’s submission to the B.C. government’s pre-budget consultations contains 29 recommendations to help the BC NDP government continue making British Columbia a better place to live and work–for everyone, not just the privileged few that benefited under 16 years of BC Liberal rule. Click here to read the recommendations, presented to the Select Standing Committee […]