‘Our work isn’t done’: New CUPE Alberta president says education support workers still underpaid

CUPE Alberta President Raj Uppal speaks with Alberta Primetime host Michael Higgins about recently being elected to the role.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Michael Higgins: What does it mean to you to be heading up a union representing some 40,000 Alberta workers in municipal, educational, and health care sectors?

Raj Uppal: It’s a big undertaking, big shoes to fill but nevertheless, there’s no warm up time and we get right into our work. Education workers are just back to work but our work isn’t done there either. So the work continues.

MH: What drove you to run against incumbent Rory Gill, who as president led your union through that school support workers strike?

RJ: It was a great leadership Rory provided over the years. It’s a place of democracy and democracy asked and we presented. So that is our internal system and again, like democracy, here I am.

MH: That was a major strike involving as many as 6,600 employees across eight school divisions. What prolonged the labour action?

RJ: It definitely was one of largest strikes for CUPE within Alberta, but obviously nationally, we’ve done much larger actions than that.

What really took us out for that long is, is our current government, their secret mandates and their interference in our bargaining process.

MH: What did it take to reach and settle agreements?

RJ: I think the power in numbers, and the solidarity across other labour bodies, and the actions that have put us back at the bargaining tables, the increasing numbers in locals and members wanting to take action is what brought us back to the tables with the deal that we have now.

MH: In terms of details, what is at the heart of the agreements? What do they accomplish for your members?

RJ: Those details are being worked out so I’m not going to go into exact details because some are just wrapping up. Some more are to go to the table at this point.

We definitely broke the mandate but let’s be clear that our work, like I said earlier, isn’t done yet. Our support workers in Alberta are still underpaid and so those conversations will continue in the next rounds of bargaining.

MH: And as those conversations continue, what’s your key takeaway from how all of this played out?

RJ: There’s definitely a lot of challenges that have been identified. I think our major obstacle was the bargaining and the secret mandates that the government continue to do, and interference, but also there were many other challenges as well with our trustees not having any awareness or involvement in the process, or standing up with workers, or being aware of the situations.

So there were quite a few hurdles. CUPE will take many other initiatives to bring workers back to power. There was a lot of learning, definitely, and takeaways.

MH: Post-strike, as the new president of CUPE Alberta, what will you prioritize? What tops your to-do list?

RJ: We are heading right into elections as we get off the picket lines. Whether that is our municipalities or whether that is our federal, CUPE nationally takes quite a role when it comes to electing our bosses.

We will be putting in a lot of work in there, electing our bosses, whether that comes to our trustees or our municipal elections and our councillors, all the way to federally.

That’s one priority, and of course, the other is to ensure that all settlements with our education workers have gone well. We continue to then enforce those on to our other locals that are going to the table or are ready to be at the bargaining table.

There’s a lot of that work ahead, mainly right now at this point it’s just getting the workers back to work, and ensuring that all the payouts and all of the locals are handling that.

Municipal elections are our next big focus, and there was a lot of learnings to take away from our strikes, and so we will be putting in a lot more work into ensuring that our bosses understand what the workers need.