Ranalletta Re-Elected President of CUPE BC, Province's Largest Union
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Karen Ranalletta has been re-elected to lead B.C.'s largest union – CUPE BC. This will be her third term as president of the B.C. division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, representing over 100,000 workers across the province.
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'I could not be more proud to be your President,' said Ranalletta, who ran unopposed at the CUPE BC 2025 Convention held this week in Vancouver. 'I know we have it in us to take on the challenges of the next year head on, and I am ready for the fight.'
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Prior to being the first woman elected to lead CUPE BC in over 25 years, Ranalletta served three terms as a General Vice-President, and as President of CUPE 2950 – representing more than 1500 clerical and library workers at the University of British Columbia.
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At the annual convention, Tony Rebelo was elected to his first full term as Secretary Treasurer. Rebelo was first appointed to the post by the CUPE BC executive board mid-term in December 2024. Rebelo is a member of CUPE 7000, working at SkyTrain for over 23 years.
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Over 400 CUPE BC delegates also elected four General Vice-Presidents, with regional caucus' electing Regional Vice-Presidents, and equity caucuses elected diversity vice presidents to join Ranalletta and Rebelo on the unions executive for a 2-year term.
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The 2025 CUPE BC convention passed over 50 resolutions setting the agenda of the union's coming year and heard from guest speakers including CUPE's National President Mark Hancock and National Secretary Treasurer Candace Rennick, and BC Premier David Eby.
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Winnipeg Free Press
12 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Lessons from an airline strike
Opinion Air Canada's planes are, slowly, once again taking to the skies, but there's a whole lot about the way the dispute played out between the airline and its flight attendants that figuratively just won't fly. The fact a tentative settlement was reached, with the assistance of a chief mediator appointed by the federal government after nine hours of talks that ended early Tuesday morning essentially confirms the assertion by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) that the airline had previously refused to bargain in good faith in an effort to avert and/or end a strike. CUPE officials argued Air Canada wasn't interested in doing the hard work of hammering out a deal and was instead banking on federal-government intervention in the form of a back-to-work order that would end the strike and force the dispute to binding arbitration. The timeline of events over the past few days certainly seems to support that view. Negotiations hit an impasse, and with 99 per cent of Air Canada's 10,000 flight attendants having voted in favour of strike action, on Aug. 13 CUPE served the company with a 72-hour strike notice (Air Canada responded with a similarly timed lockout notice). Anticipating a strike, the airline started cancelling flights the following day; after the union refused the company's request for binding arbitration, Air Canada followed by asking the federal government to impose it. Flight attendants walked off the job early Saturday, forcing the cancellation of all Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge flights. With the strike affecting more than 130,000 passengers daily, Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu announced she was exercising her right under the Canada Labour Code to end the strike and force arbitration — clearly the move Air Canada was anticipating and counting on as a mechanism to get its planes back in the air. What the airline was not banking on, it seems, was CUPE's response that it would defy the back-to-work demand and order its members to remain on the picket lines, even after a declaration by the Canada Industrial Relations Board that the strike was illegal and must end by noon Monday. Less than 24 hours later, the tentative agreement was reached. Wednesdays A weekly dispatch from the head of the Free Press newsroom. While the sequence of events certainly seems to support CUPE's allegation of bad-faith bargaining by Air Canada based on an assumption that government intervention would end the strike, the airline is not the only party that has cause for reflection and a need to do some explaining. The federal jobs minister and Prime Minister Mark Carney should provide the rationale for its hasty decision to intervene in this dispute — a move that mirrors the Liberal government's earlier legislative efforts, under prime minister Justin Trudeau, to end rail, port and postal-service disruptions. It took CUPE's defiance of the back-to-work order to demonstrate the collective-bargaining process can work if both parties make a good-faith commitment to negotiating a deal and one side isn't relying on the 'crutch' of government intervention to strengthen its position. By successfully forcing Air Canada to work toward a negotiated settlement, CUPE has no doubt reframed the manner in which future disputes will be handled, by the directly affected parties and also by the government of the day. It's incumbent on the Carney government to absorb the events of the past week as a teachable moment in its handling of labour disputes. And now that its planes are (slowly) getting back in the air, it's the duty of Air Canada to atone for the appalling manner in which it treated its customers before and during this mercifully short but nonetheless painful interruption of service.
a day ago
How an act of defiance by Air Canada's flight attendants was a win for labour rights
The successful defiance of a hotly contested piece of Canada's Labour Code has boosted hope for worker rights in the country, labour advocates say. The union and its thousands of striking Air Canada flight attendants refused to go back to work after the federal government invoked the Section 107 (new window) of the Canada Labour Code. As a result, Air Canada returned to the bargaining table and overnight the two parties came to a tentative agreement that the 10,500 flight attendants in the union will soon be able to vote on. This is a big win for flight attendants that's going to force the federal government to re-evaluate how it intervenes in labour disputes going forward, said Larry Savage, a professor of labour studies at Brock University. The ministers' back-to-work order backfired spectacularly. CBC has learned the first year of the deal would give a 12 per cent salary bump to flight attendants in their first five years on the job and eight per cent for those with six or more years of experience. In the second year, employees would see another three per cent increase, followed by a 2.5 per cent increase the year after that. One of the biggest issues, which galvanized public sympathy, was the fact that flight attendants at Air Canada and other airlines are not paid for much of the time that they spend helping passengers while on the ground. Under the new deal, attendants would receive 50 per cent of their salary for 60 minutes of boarding and cabin secure checks for narrow body planes and 70 minutes for wide body planes. That amount would increase by five per cent every year of the agreement. Union says Air Canada expected government intervention The agreement took about seven hours but followed eight months of bargaining, says Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) national president Mark Hancock. Hancock said it had recently became clear that Air Canada was expecting the federal government to force flight attendants back to work without coming to a collective agreement, just as it had done with postal workers last fall. We definitely noticed a change in the employer, Hancock said in a phone interview Tuesday. We were thinking that, OK, they're probably going to bring 107. Enlarge image (new window) Mark Hancock, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), arrives at Toronto Pearson International Airport for his flight, on Tuesday following the end of the Air Canada strike. Photo: Reuters / Carlos Osorio Just 12 hours into the strike that began Saturday, Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu invoked Section 107, which allows the minister to order binding arbitration and end work stoppages. The provision had seldom been used up until 2024, when the Liberals invoked it in the ports and railways strikes, then again during the Canada Post strike. WATCH | Section 107 explained: When it was invoked again on the weekend, labour rights activists began worrying that the government's reliance on this action — instead of passing back-to-work legislation through Parliament — would undermine both collective bargaining and the overall right of workers to strike in this country. It actually is corrosive to the very practice and the principle of free voluntary collective bargaining, said Chris Roberts, social and economic policy director at the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). But this time, something different happened. Hancock announced that striking flight attendants would remain on the picket line despite the back-to-work order by Canada's labour board, which was triggered by Hajdu's invoking of Section 107. If it means folks like me going to jail, so be it, Hancock said in remarks (new window) that made headlines across the country. Our members were ready for the long haul, he added Tuesday, Roberts said he was also aware that Air Canada was stalling during talks and had instead turned its attention to urging the government to trigger 107. The labour congress's president, Bea Bruske, said she believes employers will no longer be able to expect this kind of intervention. Employers should not ever think that government can bail them out, she said. Issue of unpaid work resonated As the threat of a strike or lockout approached, CUPE realized its members had the public's support, said Savage, the Brock University professor whose research has focused on the politics of organized labour in Canada. There was something about these flight attendants, the particular issue that they were fighting about related to unpaid work, [that] resonated so strongly with so many, said Savage. Enlarge image (new window) Demonstrators at Toronto Pearson International Airport hold placards after Air Canada flight attendants said they would remain on strike, defying a government decision to force them back to their duties. Photo: Reuters / Kyaw Soe Oo Between that and the speed with which Hajdu invoked Section 107, Air Canada was quick to return to the table, he said. There have been other recent governments' efforts to intervene in labour disputes or limiting workers' right to strike. In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford's 2022 introduction, then repeal, of Bill 28 (new window) followed an outcry by several different unions; elsewhere, Quebec's Bill 89 is being challenged by four McGill University faculty associations (new window) . In each case, Savage says there has been public pushback to attempts by Canadian governments to overstep labour rights. When governments stack the deck in favour of employers, unions are going to resist. Workers are going to use their leverage to insist on negotiated settlements, even if that means ignoring the law, he said. Verity Stevenson (new window) · CBC News Verity is a reporter for CBC in Montreal. She previously worked for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. With files from Peter Zimonjic
Toronto Star
2 days ago
- Toronto Star
Labour leaders demand Carney government change the law used to end Air Canada impasse
Canada's union leaders want the Liberals to stop using a contentious piece of the country's labour code and are prepared to back Air Canada's flight attendants in their illegal strike to draw a 'line in the concrete'' with the Carney government. A tentative deal was reached early Tuesday between Air Canada and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), but not before the federal government had invoked Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to force flight attendants back to work. That section allows the jobs minister to direct the Canada Industrial Relations Board to order parties into arbitration or end strikes to 'secure industrial peace.' The Liberal government has used it eight times since 2024 to end strikes or lockouts, including work stoppages at railways and port strikes.
