AUPE is engaging members and staff to create an ambitious Strategic Plan to guide our union for years to come.
"We've never done anything like this."
When Guy Smith—who has been AUPE President for over 12 years, a vice-president for eight years, and a rank-and-file activist for 15 more—says AUPE is taking on groundbreaking work, you know he means it.
AUPE’s new Strategic Plan is the first of its kind and massive in scope, aiming to guide our union for years to come. While this is not AUPE’s first strategic plan, it is an undertaking that towers over anything members have seen previously.
“We are involving members from every corner of Alberta, from the worksite floor to the Provincial Executive, in order to empower and support them in new, innovative ways,” says Smith. “The level of member-engagement involved in creating our new Strategic Plan is unprecedented.”
And how could our new Strategic Plan be anything but unprecedented? AUPE members have faced life-changing challenges in recent years: we have endured numerous attacks from the UCP government, frustrating rounds of bargaining with our employers, and a worldwide pandemic that continues to threaten Albertans as well as our entire health care system. Given the severity of these challenges, the need to rebuild, refocus, and re-energize is paramount to AUPE’s efforts to increase members’ strength and solidarity.
Work on the plan began with the Provincial Executive. As elected leaders representing every Local within our union, they spent two full days debating everything the plan needed in order to engage and mobilize members.
The Provincial Executive is AUPE’s governing body between conventions, but they had never before been so involved in the union’s strategic planning. Their focus was not just on improving past practices or helping members recover from the pandemic, but also our aspirations; a shared vision of the heights AUPE could reach in the future.
“Their enthusiasm was inspiring,” says Smith.
“The amount of work and thoughtfulness that the Provincial Executive put into our Strategic Plan is a testament to their leadership and the strength of our union.”
The Provincial Executive produced four guiding statements as a result of these discussions: Negotiations; Workplace Power; Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (IDE); and External Relationships. Each guiding statement has an obvious meaning at first glance, but there are nuanced strategic and tactical possibilities contained within.
Negotiations
The most important issue for most AUPE members is negotiating improved collective agreements. But there’s more to Negotiations than what happens at the bargaining table. Most importantly, this work will focus on educating members about bargaining’s limitations and empowering them to back up their negotiating teams with credible displays of power that our employers must take seriously.
Workplace Power
Like the work governed by the Negotiations guiding statement, we must all work to empower AUPE members no matter where they are in their union journey, from new employees to seasoned activists. We must also increase the number of AUPE stewards to help take on the bosses and help members win grievances.
Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity
Unions—and society as a whole—have not always been welcoming to members of marginalized communities. We need to change that, and it starts with breaking the barriers members face when participating in their union and encouraging equity-seeking groups to realize their power as part of the AUPE family.
External Relationships
AUPE members provide invaluable services for Albertans, and many of us work at sites alongside members from other unions. Strategies developed under this guiding statement will use our existing relationships with like-minded and non-traditional partners to defend, improve, and inform Albertans of the importance of public services.
Once these guiding statements were established, nearly 600 Local Council representatives spent all of spring 2022 working on developing strategies that their Local could put into action to achieve the goals of the guiding statement they selected. This was itself an unprecedented level of member engagement, as far as strategic planning goes. These members also assembled tactic development teams that will work on implementing the strategic goals set by each Local.
This is, of course, to say nothing of the hours AUPE staff are devoting to the strategic plan to ensure its success. The goals set by the strategic plan involve, in some cases, complete overhauls and adjustments to the union’s internal practices. Within every department and process—from organizing tactics to steward recruitment to an online AUPE member events calendar—AUPE staff are giving their all to better serve members.
But the work on the plan is far from over. In fact, most of the actual work to achieve the goals and aspirations of the Strategic Plan will be completed over the next two years.
“As a result of the extreme challenges of the past two years, AUPE leaders, activists, members and staff have committed to the plan’s success and that we continue to grow stronger,” says Smith. “The tremendous amount of work and dedication that has already been put into the Strategic Plan will be matched only by the work yet to be done.”