Alberta Union of Provincial Employees

rdf:langString Alberta Union of Provincial Employees

rdf:langString Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE)

rdf:langString Alberta Union of Provincial Employees

rdf:langString Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

rdf:langString Canada

rdf:langString The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) is a Canadian trade union operating solely in the province of Alberta. With approximately 95,000 members as of March 2019, it is Alberta's largest union. AUPE is primarily a public sector union, with members employed in government, health care, education, boards and agencies, municipalities, and occasionally private companies. As of 2022, AUPE has 33 locals and administers more than 120 separate collective agreements. Notable employers of AUPE members include the Government of Alberta, Alberta Health Services, Covenant Health, University of Calgary, Northern and Southern Alberta Institutes of Technology, Edmonton Catholic Schools, and ATB Financial. As of 2014, the union had a staff of more than 100 employees at its headquarters in Edmonton and seven regional offices across Alberta, including Peace River, Grande Prairie, Athabasca, Camrose, Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge. AUPE has its origins in the Civil Service Association of Alberta, founded in 1919 to represent "civil servants," as direct employees of the Alberta government were then known. It became a legal union with the power to bargain collectively in 1977. AUPE remains active in the union movement and in provincial issues in Alberta. In the fall of 2007, it undertook a major campaign to press for changes in Alberta's labour laws, which ban strikes by most AUPE members. Despite those bans, AUPE members have taken illegal strike action on several occasions to press their demands for collective agreements.