President's Message

October 3, 2023
(as reported at the 10/3/2023 General Membership Meeting)

As you are all probably aware, bargaining in both our COE and EPL areas have been very difficult and have pretty much come to a standstill. Unfortunately, the EPL unit is apparently bound by the monetary mandate imposed by the COE, which as we all know has been and continues to be 0% for 2021, 1% for 2022, and 2% for 2023, and is, in effect, really unable to bargain in any manner where monetary items are involved.

At our COE bargaining table, it has been extremely frustrating because we have been unable to bargain almost any item even with a non-monetary amount attached. It is very apparent that the City's bargaining team has no leeway to bargain, and bluntly, no authority to bargain. This situation comes back to our Mayor and Council, because at the end of the day, no matter how loudly or how many times they repeat the mantra that they are not involved with the bargaining process, they are the ones who approve the bargaining proposals and the monetary mandate that the City bargaining team brings to the table.

Once again, I urge you to call, email or visit your Councillor in person to express your concerns. Ask your relatives and friends to communicate with their Councillor their dissatisfaction in regards to the way you are being treated by your employer. All we are asking for is a fair and equitable deal to help offset some of the huge financial costs that inflation and high interest rates have imposed upon us over the last few years. Five years now without any economic increase to some of the lowest paid classifications in the City, positions inhabited mainly by women and newcomers to Canada.

I would also like to touch on a couple of other issues that are of concern:

• LTD (Long Term Disability) leave - This item has, over the last five to six years, become increasingly more expensive to our membership, as they pay premiums to support the program. Beginning in the years 2017 and 2018, we started to see a significant rise in usage of the plan. This usage coincided with the allowance of General medical practitioners being allowed to diagnose mental health ailments. From the years 2017 to 2021, we saw more than a doubling of case loads onto our LTD program with approximately 90% of new cases being related to mental health. This issue has become of such concern that the Coalition of Edmonton City Unions (CECU) has set up a meeting with the COE and Alberta Blue Cross to discuss the administration of the plan by the COE and the review of files by Blue Cross. We as individual unions want to access the names of individuals who are on the program, the length of time on the program and review Blue Cross activity in managing each file.
  Each and every Coalition union has had members reach out to express concern around individuals’ behaviour and activity while on LTD. We all recognize the need for these programs for members with legitimate health concerns but also need to be assured that there is no abuse of the program as it is the members of all of our unions that fund the program.
  The CECU has also been meeting on a regular basis outside of scheduled biweekly meetings to discuss how we are going to approach bargaining for the years 2024 and 2025. We will be bringing forth those plans to our memberships in the near future. It should be noted that currently we have appointed Liam Peuramaki, the CECU Liaison, to sit at CSU 52’s bargaining table with the COE.
• The Coalition presidents have also begun discussions as to how we approach vetting and supporting candidates for the next civic election. I would also like to mention that polling around the PR campaign CSU 52 has been running over the last few months is very positive. Knowledge of who we are, what we do, and our likeability factor has increased significantly. This continues to be a work in progress.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and will chat with you more in the near future.

Sincerely,
Lanny Chudyk