Canadian Union Of Public Employees

I am pleased to have this opportunity of participating with you in this important conference. I would like to start by providing you with a bit of background on my own union experiences. At present I work for the Government in the Province of Manitoba in Canada. I serve as the Secretary to a Cabinet Committee responsible for Community and Economic Development. The Government is one of three New Democratic Party (NDP) Governments in Canadian Provinces. The NDP is closely aligned with labour and I am one of a number of labour folks that have been hired by the Government.

Prior to taking up my current job, I was active with the Canadian Union of Public Employees--commonly referred to as CUPE--for nearly three decades. I was a rank-and-file activist for the 7 years that I worked as a clerk typist and then as an electrician with a publicly owned electrical utility in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I then went to work for CUPE as an organiser in 1973, and over a 20 year period served as an organiser, union representative, negotiator, educator, assistant to the National President and regional director. As well I served in the NDP Government as a Member of the Legislature and Cabinet Minister during the period 1981 to 1988.

CUPE is Canada's largest union, representing over 485,000 workers. The union represents workers in the public sector, municipal, school board, universities, health care, social services, some Provincial Government and Crown Agencies employees and flight attendants. In my Province, Manitoba, CUPE represents some 22,000 workers in the same sectors as previously mentioned.

CUPE is both a dynamic and progressive union and has experienced continued growth. It is built on a high degree of local autonomy and local membership control. CUPE has thousands of local unions each with their own elected executive structure. Sectoral, provincial and national elected bodies provide support and coordination for the local unions. The vast majority of the staff of the union has been drawn from our pool of activists. They provide negotiating, grievance and technical support to the leadership and members.

During the recession of the early 1990s unions in our country came under pressure from employers, governments and the media to negotiate concessions and rollbacks to collective agreements. Our union's national position on these issues was clear. We were opposed to concessionary bargaining and were committed to defending our members' rights.

In ensuing struggle our union won a number of important victories but we also suffered numerous defeats. Wages were rolled backed or frozen and concessions were forced on us.

In the process it became clear to us that the union had lost it ability to mobilise its members to take collective action. A large number of union members had come to view their union as simply a service organization. They paid their dues to the union and in return the union bargained on their behalf and made sure the contract was enforced. Their relationship to the union was the same as their relationship to a motor league: they paid dues and when they got stuck, they expected the league to send out a tow truck -- in a hurry. While the motor league claims to be member organisation, people belong to it for the service. And if there is something wrong with the service, they begin to look for a new service provider.

The defeats that the union experienced in the 1990s led many union members to question the need for a union. After all you don’t need a union to rollback your wages and benefits.

A service club model of unionism not only turns off the members, it also burns out the service providers. During the 1990s the demands and expectations that were placed on union staff and activists were tremendous. The fact that many struggles ended in defeat and alienated members from staff had a serious and negative impact on staff morale.

CUPE's national leadership recognised that the status quo was not working. We needed to strengthen and revitalise the union and to create an environment that fostered new and bold ideas. The union needed more activists, it needed to support activists who were burning out, it needed more training for staff and activists, it needed more collective action, and it needed to better support staff. We saw the need to increase collective action and militancy in the union. We also saw the need to increase the involvement of women, aboriginal, minority and disabled members. Finally we needed better connections with the community building on existing alliances with social action groups.

Based on an analysis of these problems, the leadership brought forward a policy paper to the 1995 National Convention entitled Organising the Organised. It set out a broad policy of changes in the union that would allow us to balance the organising and servicing roles of unionism. A major shift in the union was needed to bring the union back in contact with the members and to provide members and activists with stronger tools to engage with their union.

Rank and file delegates to the union's 1995 National Convention adopted this policy. I should mention at this point that at the next convention in 1997 a further policy paper entitled Organising the Organised - We're Building - Its Working - Keep Moving was brought forward. It reported on progress over the first two years and set out further directions for change in the union. This policy was debated and passed by a large majority.

We had a new policy, but fine words about giving unions back to the members are never hard to find. The problem is always in turning rhetoric into action.

How did we implement our policy? First, we held multi-day training and strategic planning sessions with the union’s senior elected and staff leadership. At these sessions we developed a joint understanding of our goals and laid the plans for changing the union.

The union’s extensive education programs underwent wholesale changes to ensure that they were consistent with the Organising the Organised direction. As an example, greater focus was put on the role of shop stewards or what you call delegates. We wanted shop stewards to do more than just deal with workplace grievances. By enhancing their roles in the areas of communications and organising, we sought to encourage them to act as union builders in their workplaces.

Literally every education course was changed and a number of new courses developed in line with the policy. The changes in the education programs covered areas such as strategic planning, emphasis on collective problem-solving, communications in the workplace, developing activism and participation of members in local unions, membership involvement in the bargaining process, campaigns etc. CUPE had always been in the forefront of the use of members in the delivery of members’ education. However, this system of occasional instructors was enhanced. More rank and file members took on responsibility for training programs and we increased the skills of the trainers in the use of new tools needed to implement the Organising the Organised policy.

Increased time off with pay was provided for the National and Provincial elected leadership to work with the membership. As well rank and file leadership were booked off with pay to help staff organise and mobilise campaigns to support strikes or broader political action campaigns.

Our communication policy put a new stress on member-to-member communications. There was a large increase in the number and frequency of union publications. Regional and local union newsletters were encouraged and supported. As well the union expanded the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web to allow more members to interact with their union

Dozens of workshops were held throughout the country to explore new ways for the union to work with the members. About 20 activists and staff were jointly trained to organise and put on these workshops. Through this process Local unions were encouraged to experiment with new techniques in their local unions and to engage the membership in all activities of the local union. Hundreds of activists went through these workshop sessions.

An Organising the Organised manual was developed in a modular format that was based on the manual prepared by Teresa Conrow for the Public Services International. This manual has been used for weeklong, weekend, one day or evening workshops for members and activists. The manual's modular format allowed it to be used to help organise members around collective bargaining issues or political issues and to improve the working of local unions. Modules include all aspects of organising techniques.

A series of easy to read and use resource manuals were developed called the Power Tools. Power tools are manuals on specific areas such as communications, workplace campaigns, alliance building, fighting concessions, defending our workplaces, responding to new management schemes and keeping CUPE members working, that could be used by local union activists and members for specific activities at the local level were developed as part of this series.

The union's strike manual which is used by local unions for strike preparation and action was totally rewritten to put a greater focus on membership mobilisation and organising around strike activities including building alliances.

Workshops were organised for all the union’s staff to help them understand their role in the Organising the Organised policy and to deal with the fears of the staff regarding work of the bargaining unit and power issues. The workshops included the regional staff representatives and the technical staff of the union. These workshops were held on a regional and national basis and were an extremely important part of the process of change in the union.

Members throughout the country were trained as workplace organisers to assist in the organising of new groups into the union. A specific training manual for organisers in this area was developed. A two-day course was developed and hundreds of occasional organisers were trained. These occasional organisers were used in workplaces or sectors that related to their own areas of work. As an example, health-care workers would be booked off from work to assist in organising other health-care facilities. In other cases if a workplace had a predominant ethnic group, a worker from the same ethnic group in another workplace that was represented by the union would be assigned to the organising drive. In the case of an organising drive of part-time lecturers at a University, organisers were employed from that group on a casual basis to work on the drive while they continued their studies and part time work at the University. In all cases these rank and file organisers worked in concert and under general direction of union staff organisers.

A New Member workshop was put in place for members of newly organised locals and other supports were put in the place to assist newly organised locals. This was important to ensure that newly organised local unions could have the necessary resources to function well right from the start.

We established a training and strategic planning process for Women, Gays and Lesbians and Visible Minorities. Each of these equity-seeking groups has organised their national equity committees in our union. The union wanted to ensure that there were specific action plans to increase the role of members of these equity seeking groups in the union and build support amongst the rest of the membership. A National conference for equity-seeking groups, under the auspices of the Organising the Organised policy, brought together several hundred union members for a number of days. It generated further strategic directions for the union to follow to increase the involvement of equity seeking group members in the union and its structures.

A video and workbook were developed on the policy and circulated to all local unions. The video contained real life examples of successful efforts of changing local unions and engaging more members in the activities of their union. Local union leadership was encouraged to show the video and discuss it and the workbook at all local union meetings.

The policy was discussed at most of the hundreds of conferences, schools and meetings of the union holds each year. In some cases these sessions held specific workshops on the policy. In other cases there was discussion and to debate to ensure that there was growing support for the changes.

In my province, Manitoba we developed some unique programs in addition to the National ones previously mentioned

Shortly after the policy was adopted Teresa Conrow (from California, U.S.A.), a renowned expert of these progressive change methods in unions, facilitated a one-week staff training and planning session on Organising the Organised. Sister Conrow worked successfully with our union throughout the Country at the early stages of the implementation of this policy. Ongoing staff training focused on providing staff members with skills as organisers and facilitators. Staff needed to be constantly supported by the senior staff and elected leadership as they worked to help local union leadership and members take on more active roles in their union. This included understanding the impact on staff workloads.

A joint leadership and staff strategic planning session set goals and developed programs to implement the policy in our Province. This session included the Provincial Elected leadership, Presidents of key local unions, chairpersons of all Provincial Committees and all staff of the union for a total group of 50 leaders and staff. The joint sessions lead to jointly agree upon plan of actions for implementing the policy.

We set up a coordinating committee to help implement policy and monitor progress. This committee included two executive members from the provincial executive, two Committee chairpersons, four staff representative including the education representative and the regional director. They reported on a regular basis to the provincial elected and staff leadership committee, provincial executive body and the annual conventions.

We set up a program we called the local union buddy program. This program teamed fledgling local union leaders with more experienced and trained union leaders from other locals to help with specific problems. The union provided the necessary time off with pay for the buddy local union activist to have time to assist the local union leadership requesting assistance. This allowed local union leaders to go to other local leaders to ask for assistance in handling problems or issues in their local. The buddy process helped build skills and leadership ability in both locals as a result. A central coordinating group was responsible to review requests and assist in the matching of the buddies.

Another program was the formation of the member-to-member communicator program. Members were trained to act as workplace communicators in workshops that were as short as one evening or held over a two-day period. This program was used for bargaining, inter union votes and political action campaigns. The workplace communicators were responsible for ensuring two-way communications with the members. Their work was supported by the use of newsletters, workplace bulletins. They were also responsible for membership feedback to the local leadership, toll free telephone lines and web page information. As example one local of 150 members had a five member bargaining committee. The local engaged 15 members to act as workplace communicators who were trained in an evening training session. After each bargaining session the 5 members of the bargaining team met briefly with the 15-workplace communicators reported to them in detailed what took place at the bargaining session. Each communicator had the responsibility of talking with 10 members. The result within hours of each bargaining session was that the members had been fully informed as to what happened in bargaining. And the workplace communicators had and were able to provide the bargaining team with instant information and immediate feedback as to how the members felt about the issues in dispute. The program resulted in unprecedented support for the bargaining committee and the result was in an excellent collective agreement agreed to just hours before strike action. This program was also used for the 13,000 health care workers in our Province who worked in over 70 workplaces throughout the Province. The success of the work of these legions of workplace communicators was seen in the massive support for the union in inter union votes and for potential strike action in votes in the 70 workplaces wherein nearly all locals voted independently for strike action. They also achieved an excellent settlement on the eve of actual strike action.

Another innovation in Manitoba was the early development of local union strategic planning workshops. A small number of Provincial elected leaders and staff were trained to put on short but thorough strategic planning sessions. This process allowed the local unions to deal with the problems in their local unions building on their own strengths and ideas. These one-day workshops included the entire Executive, Committee Chairpersons and in some cases the local shop stewards. These workshops were so popular that some unions are holding them on a recurring basis.

One of the major outcomes of all of these programs was a link of building local unions to greater militancy at the bargaining table and against right wing employers and Governments. Another major outcome was the increased role that was played by rank and file leadership in our union in all structures and at all levels. Leaders were better equipped to help lead the struggles of the union.

I believe that the CUPE program Organising the Organised was successful in moving the union forward. It still continues to improve the union and better connect it with the members. The Union has continued to grow and to achieve major success in collective bargaining and a number of political action campaigns, however like any process of progressive change more remains to be done.

Let me spend a few moments talking about the keys to its success. I believe it was successful because of the following:

• It had a National focus with regional implementation
• It followed an integrated approach covering all aspects of union activity: education, conferences, newsletters etc.
• It involved the elected leadership, members and staff in how the policy was planned and implemented. I believe this is a critical point for success in building change in unions.
• It was built on solid union principles and focused on sharing positive experiences within the union
• It followed a balanced approach: building local union leadership capacity while effectively utilising staff
• It had a long-term horizon
• It was sensitive to equity seeking groups
• It recognised the important role that staff play in the union and had intensive staff training and increased support for the staff
• It was open to change based on feedback from activists, members and staff

However there were many barriers and problems throughout the implementation of the policy (some of which still exist today).

There was a general resistance to change. Furthermore we did not always get everything right. There were discussions, the showcasing of successes and changing the programs to address the issues members identified that helped overcome this.

Another barrier was the feeling that the union was offloading activities and responsibilities from staff onto activists and members. This barrier was overcome through continued dialogue and supports for the activists and an understanding of the ongoing role of staff in the union.

A further barrier was the resistance to moving from a greater reliance on the servicing model of unionism to more focus on an organising model. This was overcome by understanding that there was needed to be a balanced approach to this transition and that it was not simply one approach over the other. Members had to be supported while unions organising capacity was being built.

Costs were a barrier. While this was obviously a difficult one. The union was able to redirect resources and eventually increase the union dues based on membership recognition of the value of the changes.

Some staff resisted change. Some staff thought their authority was being undermined. Other worried that their work was being moved from them and their bargaining unit to the activists. This required ongoing discussion and training about the important role of both staff and activists. As well the union increased staff where necessary and provided increased support to the staff through training and other means during the period of implementation of the policy. In addition the interview process for the hiring of new staff was changed to include a number of questions related to the policy.

At times we lost direction and momentum. Unions are always at risk of being overtaken by events such as negotiations, strikes, elections’ and they demand your attention. We tried to overcome this by ensuring that whatever issue came up it was dealt with in the context of the policy. As new problems arose these issues and challenges were used to organise and reinforce the policy. As an example when the Government moved to privatise hospital food services in our Province, the union quickly built on the strength of the activists and members to plan and executive a fight back campaign using the model of the policy. In the past the union's elected and staff leadership would meet and plan a campaign. This time the staff and elected leadership called a meeting of all of the members affected by the attempts to privatise and held a strategic planning session to plan a membership led campaign supported by the leadership and staff. Many workplace and political actions were held that came out of the ideas of the members and as a result there was great support by the members for the actions. The ongoing campaign was coordinated by a group of activists, leaders and staff. The campaign was successful in keeping the food services in the public sector and later when there was an inter-union vote for union recognition amongst 6 unions, CUPE won the vote with an overwhelming majority on the first ballot.

Some things were not done right. And those mistakes also created barriers for change. On occasion we moved too quickly. Rank and file members were booked off work and given tasks for which they lacked sufficient training and support. Not surprisingly some staff members wondered if their own jobs were being threatened or undermined when they saw members undertaking what had previously been staff responsibilities.

This being the labour movement, there were times when we didn’t fully recognise the ways that our changes were affecting the personal and family lives of activists and staff. The danger was simply coming up with new ways to burn people out.

Perhaps the hardest trick of all is to combine a program for change with a commitment to listen. Not surprisingly there were times when we did not take the necessary time to discuss, debate and listen to the views of the activists, members and staff.

Over 5 years after the adoption of the Organising the Organised policy CUPE is still a union in the midst of change. There has been much progress in dealing with the challenges identified by the National Leadership in 1995 but more remains to be done.

My concluding observations for you are;

• Progressive change in democratic and dynamic organisations like a union does takes time and a lot of effort.
• One must have a clear sense of direction for change, an understanding of what the problems are, a clear commitment to change following basic union principles, the ability to alter course based on membership input and a lengthy time frame.

There must be strong support for staff to ensure that their role is enhanced through this process

There has to be legitimate and meaningful participation of all levels of leadership, the members and the staff. This cannot be a top down policy change

There needs to ongoing mentoring of the union leadership, activists and staff and support for those who are at the forefront of this change and who break through the barriers

As a staff leader I found that it was important that at all times, I be right there on the ground, in the trenches, walking the lines, handing out the leaflets, in the middle of discussion and debate, at local union meetings with the members, leaders and staff.

And finally I had to be open to change; to doing things in a different way; open to a different power relationship with my elected leadership, my members and with my staff.

Thank you for the opportunity of participating in this exciting conference, thank you for allowing me to learn from you over the next few days.

I wish you much success.

AUSTRALASIAN ORGANISING CONFERENCE

Plenary 2 Mon 26th March 11.00-12.30pm