On April 21, 1951, 23 delegates representing 9 local unions, met in the Calgary Labour Temple to discuss their common needs and aspirations. Those locals were:
These nine locals recognized the pressing need for joint action to promote the welfare of civic, hospital, school board and health department employees on the provincial scene and the importance of a union to organize exclusively in this jurisdiction. The delegates at that first convention passed two resolutions.
The first resolution passed was to approach the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada to request that a union be chartered to organize specifically in the civic field. The second resolution established an annual convention provincially in order to evaluate what they had accomplished in the past year and plan for the years to come.
In 1952, the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada agreed to charter a national union for civic workers. They issued a challenge: produce 17,000 members before the 1953 Toronto Convention of the TLC and a Charter creating such a Union would be issued.
When the 1953 Convention was held 23,000 members were clamoring for the formation of a truly civic union and the TLC chartered the National Union of Public Employees, one of the two Unions which merged to form the Canadian Union of Public Employees in 1963.
The nine original locals have met together annually since 1951, first as the Federation of Public Employees, then as the National Union of Public Employees, Alberta Division and finally under its present name CUPE Alberta.
Since then, CUPE Alberta has grown across the province. Over 100 locals represent members in 200 different worksites. CUPE Alberta represents employees of municipalities, hospitals, long term care facilities, schools, libraries, post-secondary institutions, social service agencies among others.
CUPE has played a leading role in the labour and political scene of the province. In 1995, CUPE hospital workers in Calgary went on strike to protest Conservative Premier Ralph Klein’s attempts to privatize their work. CUPE has worked with the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Friends of Medicare and the Alberta NDP to fight the many attempts to privatize health care in the province, including the fights against Bill 11 and Bill 37. CUPE has always led the way against attempts to privatize public services.
In 2003, the provincial government introduced the regionalization of health care delivery in Alberta. As a result, CUPE lost a number of representation votes to AUPE. Between the representation votes and raids between the unions, CUPE lost about 6,000 health care members.
The raiding continued until 2005 when CUPE was able to fight back against AUPE raids in Lethbridge and Edmonton. The Lethbridge raid ended with a vote of all general service employees of the Chinook Health Care Region. The employees voted by a 2-1 margin to remain with CUPE. There were few raid attempts on CUPE after that decisive victory.
CUPE has also fought for the rights of workers in the private sector. In 2005, CUPE led employees of ABS Calgary in the province’s first Casino strike. The four week job action saw much violence on the picket line, as addicted gamblers went to extremes to feed their habit. But the CUPE membership held on and won a fair contract which is still in place today.
In 2008, CUPE Alberta’s membership hit 30,000 – the same figure it was at before losing 6,000 members in representation votes five years earlier. The growth in our membership reflects the strength, diversity, and integrity of Canada’s largest union.