Sunday, December 4, 2022

Local 302 Welcomes Back Albright Manor Employees!

CLAC represented the members at Albright Gardens, a 231-bed long term care home in Beamsville since 2004. After 15 years of representation with CLAC, they left to join Unifor. Now, just under three years later, they have returned, voting 135 to 12 to return to CLAC Local 302.

All of the stewards supported the move back to CLAC. In the words of Samantha, one of the people who signed members up for Unifor, and then publicly supported the move back to CLAC, “I just didn’t know how unions worked. We didn’t like how Unifor operated because they put everything on the chief steward.”

Fran Intini, one of the union stewards for both CLAC and Unifor says, “We were left largely on our own to represent the members and couldn’t have done it without the training we received from CLAC. Unifor provided no training for any of the stewards except the chief steward.”

Nikki Harper, also a steward for both unions, was frustrated by Unifor’s lack of communication with workplace leaders.

“When we called, they would only return calls to the chief steward,” she says. “They only held a couple of membership meetings in three years.”

And when it came time to bargain, according to long-time member Sandra Smith, “there was no proposals meeting to prepare for our second contract, and no bargaining committee election.”

As union organizer Brandy Gibson concludes, “We came back to CLAC to get a real union, one that stands up for us by showing up to represent us.”

After three years of almost no contact from Unifor, four frustrated members came to the CLAC Grimsby Member Centre to ask what they needed to do to have CLAC as their union again. Four weeks later, they had enough cards to apply for a vote.

“Connecting with these members again is the most affirming time in my 24 years as a representative at CLAC,” says Michael Reid. “People walk up to us and thank us for coming back. It is truly a testament to 20 years of consistently living out CLAC’s approach to labour relations, for which no one person can take credit. This has been a team effort in the truest sense.”

Local 302 Welcomes Back Albright Manor Employees!

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