CUPE Strike: Lucy's Labor Pains

The Carnegie Learning Center is in a tough spot during the current strike of Canadian Union of Public Employees in Vancouver. It is on the third floor of the Carnegie Center, a building operated by CUPE members who have been on strike for the past two months. But the two teachers in the Learning Center, Lucy Alderson and Betsy Alkenbrack, aren’t CUPE members. The two get their pay cheques from Capilano College in North Vancouver, which has jointly run the Learning Center since Carnegie gave the Vancouver School Board the boot a decade ago.

Like most teachers, Alderson was supposed to return to work after Labour Day. Instead, she is planning a trip to Labour Relations to ask them to declare the Learning Center an essential service.

Alderson has done her homework. She invited a bunch of the Center's learners and volunteers to a meeting Thursday at Carnegie to discuss strategy for the request to Labor Relations. With Betsy Alkenbrack doing the writing, they created a "draft" press release. Calling themselves, "Common Sense People of the Downtown Eastside", they included in their press release a list of things that are essential about the Learning Center. But anybody on the Downtown Eastside with an ounce of common sense can see that the list is far from accurate:

- help with resumes and job searches
- help with negotiating government services, including online welfare applications
- access to health information
- high school upgrading
- ESL and computer training for seniors
- courses such as First Nations Journeys, Success Skills for Community Work and ESL literacy
- access to computers for information, training and services

The truth is that kitty corner from Carnegie at Main & Hastings is Pathways, an Industry Canada organization providing roughly 15 public access computers that are specially set up to help with resumes and job searches. If there are empty computers, staff turn a blind eye to people dropping in to use them for other purposes such as checking e-mail. And they have extra services specifically targeting native people.

Many people using Carnegie computers didn't have a clue about what went on at Pathways until the strike. But once they were forced off the Carnegie computers, they discovered it. One guy told the friend who had brought him that he preferred it over Carnegie, "Nobody yells at you here." A woman had earlier said that she found Pathways "more relaxed" than Carnegie. You can get help using computers from staff at Pathways too.

Anybody shut out of the Carnegie Learning Center during the strike also has the option of using the University of British Columbia Learning Exchange, a drop-in center just 2 1/2 blocks from Carnegie, on Main St. near Powell. At the Exchange you can get a chintzy half an hour on a computer. During the strike, there is often a bit of a wait for a computer and if you go after 4:00 p.m., you can forget about getting on to one. If you need basic computer help, they will give it to you. They also offer ESL.

Some users of the Carnegie Learning Center have been showing up at "Free Geek", near Main & 2nd Ave. Free Geek is an organization run by a group of "never say Microsoft" twenty-somethings with a government grant and a storefront. They provide a room full of public-access, on-line, computers on the Linux operating system.

When it comes to high school upgrading, the Carnegie Learning Center is not the only game in town. The Eastside Learning Center at Powell and Columbia St. operated by the Vancouver School Board provides high school upgrading. It's not a drop-in center like Carnegie though. They have a huge banner in the window prompting people walking by to "Register Now."

Lifeskills, an organization run by the Portland Society in the old Cordova St. Clinic building by Oppenheimer Park, has posters up around the Downtown Eastside begging for students. They help people develop computer and other skills. "Anybody can walk in there," says a Downtown Eastside resident.

When it comes to support for native people on the Downtown Eastside, there is a plethora of organizations. Just walk up Hastings St. east of Carnegie and you'll pass several. In addition, the welfare offices at Powell and Main have plenty of programs for native people looking for upgrading and jobs. In fact, they tell people that if you're non-native, they don't have much in the way of courses, but if you're native there are lots.

The list of 'essential' services provided by the Carnegie Learning Center is summed up on the press release with a blatant lie: “For most residents, this is the only place they have access to computers. This is a serious human rights violation, since most government information and access to services is only available on line.”

There is no doubt that early in the CUPE strike, Carnegie patrons missed the computers they had been accustomed to having easy access to at Carnegie. But as the strike enters its third month, many people have discovered other places to go.

In the press release it was stated that the closing of the Carnegie Learning Center is causing “pain and destruction”. If that’s the case, why did Alderson at times lock the doors of the Learning Center or evacuate everyone, always with the same excuse, “A volunteer didn’t show up.” Alderson would sit in the Learning Center by herself while low income people who wanted access to computers peered through the windows at her, resulting in her being described on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer as a “sea otter at the aquarium”. When bloggers began reporting these too frequent closures -- which were also occurring on Saturdays when it was the responsibility of CUPE members to keep the Center open -- Alderson and Alkenbrack participated in a witch hunt for the blogger, interrogating a volunteer about who could be blogging. Then Alderson personally barred a homeless man, Bill Simpson, for suspected blogging.

The barring of Simpson, which was later expanded to include the entire building by City managers under pressure from CUPE members, was criticized by Carnegie Board member Sophia Friegang as a “human rights” issue. Friegang got nowhere and resigned over the issue.

But Freigang's criticism didn't prevent the promotion of the Learning Center in the press release as a place where human rights are respected. The press release began with the headline, "LABOUR DISPUTE PUTS LEARNING AND HUMAN RIGHTS ON HOLD", and ended with an appeal to both sides to resolve the strike so that the Learning Center can operate: “Lives and human rights are at stake.”

CUPE Strike Haunted by Secretary Scandal

photo: Barry O'Neill, President, CUPE - BC Division


A former secretary to two CUPE Presidents says she'll cross CUPE picket lines. CUPE, she says, expects rights and benefits for their members that they have denied their own secretaries. In Dec. 2002, CUPE arranged for Vancouver Police Constables Megan Herrmann and Kevin Ng to telephone and visit her at her home to demand that she muzzle herself about unfair labour practices inside CUPE.

The whistle blowing secretary, who will be identified here by her initials “R.M.”, had exposed CUPE for allegedly operating a "non-union sweatshop". She claims she saw two female co-workers fired after speaking up about issues such as an excessive workload, verbal abuse, and the reneging on a promise to provide a pension plan. She saw a third woman, a long time bookkeeper at Local 116, fired after she got cancer and became less efficient.

This scandal, says the former secretary who left CUPE with two glowing letters of reference, goes right to the top of the CUPE hierarchy. When she obtained a copy of the police report dated Dec. 17, 2002, she discovered that as "evidence", police had been given a copy of a letter she had sent to Barry O'Neill, President of CUPE - British Columbia Division, and a similar one she had sent to Jim Sinclair, President of the BC Federation of Labour. The polite letters outlined unfair labour practices to which secretaries working inside the non-unionized office of CUPE Local 116 had been subjected. The message was clear from the filing of these letters in the Police Property Office, she says: "CUPE and the BC Fed believe that a woman speaking up about working conditions is committing a crime."

The secretary asked both O'Neill and Sinclair in writing in 2003 to have these letters removed from the VPD Property Office. Speaking up about working conditions is not a crime, she reminded them. Neither O'Neill or Sinclair had the letters removed. Never once did either of these leaders ever speak to the secretary about this situation.

The whistleblowing secretary appealed to the Vancouver Police to expunge the notation of "Workplace Harassment" adjacent to her name on the police computer as a result of the CUPE complaint. Speaking up about unfair labour practices is a right, not workplace harassment, she pointed out, and in her case she had not even visited or telephoned Local 116 since leaving her job there. (The VPD does not even have jurisdiction at UBC. The RCMP does.) The VPD responded in writing that such notations remain on record for "99 years", even in cases such as hers in which the accused has been completely cleared.

The whistleblowing secretary also discovered from the police report that Ian Aikenhead, a former NDP President and CUPE lawyer, had provided information, albeit misleading, to police. It was information that was in his possession as a result of his wife, Catherine Aikenhead, being an NDP-appointed public representive to a dental regulatory College years earlier. He resorted to exaggeration and misrepresentation in an attempt to present her as a complainer to police, she says, "because he knew that CUPE did not have the facts on their side."

Indeed there is evidence that CUPE did not have the facts on their side. Other secretaries from Local 116 had previously taken coplaints to higher ups at CUPE. S.A., a woman who had put in 12 years as a secretary at Local 116, S.A., had spoken to Joe, a Regional Representative, after she was fired. He would not discuss the issue and simply told her to "Get a lawyer". She sued for the pension she claimed she had been promised. When another secretary, S.K., was fired after speaking up about excessive workload and being expected to absorb verbal abuse, she too took her case up the CUPE hierarchy. The Local 116 President and Vice President were summoned to the Burnaby office of CUPE to explain themselves. When S.K telephoned several members of Local 116 to request permission to attend the next union meeting to appeal the firing directly to the membership, CUPE sent her a letter ordering her to 'cease and desist' or she would lose overtime pay accumulated. Even the whistleblowing secretary says her pay stubs and other records can be used to verify her claims that she worked for long periods without benefits that every CUPE member enjoys.

It is not just top union leaders, though, who have acted in a manner which indicates that the tactics used against the whistleblowing secretary are within their comfort zone. In 2003, CUPE Locals in Vancouver -- including those currently on strike -- and the surrounding area were notified in writing of human rights issues raised by this case and asked to ensure that CUPE leaders resolved them. What did they do? Nothing.

A steamfitter gets muzzled by CUPE BC, under Barry O'Neill's administration

The secretary was not the only whistleblower CUPE Local 116 and CUPE BC played rough with. They had successfully muzzled a whistle blowing steam fitter just months earlier in a case that led to accusations against CUPE BC of practicing political psychiatry. The steam fitter,"S.J.", had worked for years in Plant Operations at the University of BC and was a dues-paying member of CUPE Local 116 (unlike the whistle blowing secretary who was directly employed by CUPE Local 116.)

The steam fitter got on the wrong side of CUPE when he was briefly off work on compensation. Compensation cheques were issued through the union office and the steam fitter claimed that he and others receiving cheques were being shortchanged. He did the math and took the figures to CUPE. He was ignored. But he persisted. He received a cheque for $1,500 in the mail, the amount he had claimed he was shortchanged, but CUPE wouldn’t tell him what the cheque was for. He didn’t shut up. He sent a letter to CUPE pressing them on this issue and, this being just after 9/11, he wrote, "God Bless America" at the bottom of the letter. "A week later," he says, "a cheque for $640 came through the door." The steamfitter says that the cheques were issued to him through the Back to Work office on the UBC campus which was run by Colleen Garbe, a member of the CUPE Local 116 Executive.

The steamfitter also spoke to CUPE BC and CUPE National. Just as the steam fitter was considering going to the RCMP to request an investigation, CUPE called the RCMP on him.

Leaders at CUPE Local 116 told the RCMP that the steam fitter had made a death threat against CUPE Vice President Paul Cooke. The steam fitter, an immigrant from Scotland, and Cooke, an immigrant from Ireland, worked together in Plant Operations and knew each other well. The pipe fitter claims that he had a few beers and sent Cooke an e-mail about the compensation cheque issue, telling him at one point, ‘I should take you out’. This expression, the steam fitter explained, is heard in pub culture in Britain; it means that the two of us should go outside and settle this with our fists. The RCMP spoke to the steam fitter. No charges were laid.

But CUPE was turning up the heat on the steam fitter. They sent a lawyer from their Burnaby headquarters to a meeting arranged with the steamfitter at UBC. She was “tough” the steam fitter said of the lawyer. She informed him that he would have to submit to a psychiatric assessment and take medication in order to keep his job. The steamfitter did not have a lawyer at the meeting and, wanting to keep his job, he succumbed.

CUPE ruined his chances of ever getting a promotion, he believes. When he later applied for better jobs in the workplace, he found he was being ignored.

The whistleblowing secretary knows the steam fitter but neither knew of one another’s problems with CUPE as they were occurring. The workplace harassment and psych record the steam fitter acquired will be attached to his name on the police computer system for life. Just as a similar smear* is going to remain on the whistleblowing secretary's record for life; the last she heard it would be "99 years".

If I encounter a CUPE picket line, the secretary says, I'll cross it and I'll tell them why. If they try to convince me to support their right to struggle for better working lives, I'll say, "Talk to me in 99 years."


*A year after the case of "WORKPLACE HARASSMENT" was closed by the VPD, the alleged offence for which she was investigated was fraudulently altered in police records. This occurred after the secretary told O'Neill and Sinclair in writing that as long as the WORKPLACE HARASSMENT notation remained on her record, she intended to ensure that it remained on their public record. She cannot prove that labor leaders had any involvement in the retroactive change to CUPE's police complaint. For more information see post, "Evidence Tampering in CUPE Police Complaint".