CUPE BC President Mark Hancock recently responded to an opinion piece by Black Press reporter/columnist Tom Fletcher. Our response, which has been published in a number of local BC papers, is below. 

Recently you ran a column by Tom Fletcher suggesting that the Canadian Union of Public Employees was running city halls in British Columbia.

If you were a delegate to CUPE BC’s convention in April, you know all about the Portland Hotel Society and the innovative services it provides to residents of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  And you heard from some of the CUPE 1004 members who are on the front lines, working with some of the most vulnerable people in our province.

As you all know, B.C. teachers yesterday voted to ratify the tentative agreement reached earlier in the week between the BCTF and the provincial government, ending the strike that had kept schools closed for the first three weeks of the school year.

Let’s face it, for most people in our society, the real meaning of Labour Day has faded over the years. It’s now less about acknowledging the role workers have played in building our society, and more about the last long weekend of summer.

As union members and leaders, we have an obligation to the generations that came before us—and to future generations—to work harder to teach people the real meaning of Labour Day.

When I saw the images on TV and the internet of the tailings pond beach at the Mount Polley mine earlier this month my first thought was that there must be some mistake, that things like this don’t happen in BC.

How wrong I was—and how wrong the BC Liberal government has been to think the same thing.

Welcome to the Convention 2014 edition of the Public Employee. You’ll notice a new look and a new logo for our union as we close the book on our 50th anniversary and begin the second half of CUPE BC’s first century.

These are difficult times for union members in Canada. Over the past several decades, labour leaders and activists in our country have quite rightly pointed to wave after wave of anti-union sentiment and laws in the United States, as things like so-called “right to work” states emerged and resulted in a serious decline in union density. But we’re now having to look closer to home—in Ottawa and in Victoria—to guard against right-wing governments bent on making it harder for working people to join together in unions.

Note: This column was originally submitted to The Vancouver Sun on November 12, 2013.

Nobody is crazy about paying taxes but the Canadian Federation of Independent Business makes more noise about it than most people. 

Major media in BC give them a regular platform to complain that business property taxes are too high, property taxes are going up too fast and local government employees are overpaid loafers.

The CFIB was at it again in the Vancouver Sun on November 7th.  They claim that small businesses are stuck paying for

Wednesday, November 6 is Community Social Service (CSS) Worker Appreciation Day, and in addition to showing gratitude to those workers who provide vital services across British Columbia, we should also reflect on how society treats our most vulnerable citizens and their support workers.

There are more than 10,000 unionized community-based service workers in BC and CUPE BC is proud to represent 2,500 of them.

Since my election as your president last April, I’ve been trying to spend as much time as I can out on the road across BC meeting members in the communities where they live.

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Prince George, where I met with local presidents and executives from Prince George and Quesnel. It was great to spend time with activists and members and hear from them firsthand the challenges they face.