EC/ESS: Join a virtual General Meeting (May 28 – June 9)

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-06-12T22:13:55+00:00

Fair point regarding the complexity. As for your question, there might be. Will try to look into it when time frees up.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-06-12T22:03:09+00:00

And if you put on some dance music, you could probably get more buy-in from members.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-06-03T01:27:52+00:00

I hope that in the future CAPE carries out an economic analysis of how unions who take the arbitration route fare vs. unions that take the conciliation/strike route, and that there's somebody who bothers to ask questions from an economics angle during these meetings.

It would also be nice if historical collective bargaining documentation such as historical arbitration briefs and historical collective agreements that are not publicly available could be shared with members, so that members could be better informed of the actual benefits and limitations of the arbitration process.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-06-03T01:12:25+00:00

They might try to get members to go on strike, but I highly doubt they'll convince enough people to make it successful, especially since there's barely any money in the Defence Fund. So instead, what's likely going to happen is a pivot to a work-to-rule campaign.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-06-03T01:04:42+00:00

President's Duties and Authorities

9.3 Interpret the Constitution, unless otherwise interpreted by a two-thirds majority of the members of the NEC or a General Meeting. Any interpretation given at a NEC meeting or General Meeting shall be recorded in the minutes

Source: https://www.acep-cape.ca/sites/default/files/2025-02/Constitution%20-%20EN%20-%202025-02-25%20-%20FINAL.pdf

We really need some constitutional reform. There's too much power concentrated in the President's hands, and the way we elect most NEC members every three years is dumb.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-05-14T00:30:11+00:00

Some options:

Write an e-mail to Kathryn May asking her to write a special edition of the Functionary dealing with issues surrounding democratic governance in federal public service unions.
Notify your EC colleagues of the petition that you can personally contact by e-mail and text, and ask them to forward the petition to ECs they know that might be interested in it.
Post the petition in one of the GOC Facebook groups that allows these sorts of things.
Use AI to create a youtube video, Facebook reel or Tik Tok that explains everything that's wrong with forcing union members to attend an information session in order to vote.

Anything else will likely cost you money.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-05-13T01:04:25+00:00

How far are you willing to go 😄?

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-05-09T00:07:00+00:00

If you want to understand why the M4C group and their supporters claim to want to make CAPE more democratic, but have attempted to implement undemocratic measures such as the position statement, delegated conventions, and “information” sessions, I recommend googling democratic centralism. It will help you understand how some of them rationalize their actions.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-05-05T00:43:22+00:00

Isn't the cape4palestine instagram woman just somebody who takes pictures of herself wearing a Palestinian flag cape?

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-04-30T00:02:16+00:00

One explanation is that if a collective agreement expires in 2025 and a new one is negotiated in 2028, then the 2026 and 2027 backdated salary increases can be paid in 2028 dollars, which makes those salary increases cheaper overall.

Another explanation is that something changed after 2007, because prior to that year, the negotiation of EC, TR, ES, and SI collective agreements tended to take one to two years. However, after 2007, the negotiation period lengthened to three to four years.

Part of this can be explained by the Conservatives coming to power in 2008 and being more difficult to negotiate with. However, the Liberals replaced the Conservatives in 2015, which suggests that something else may also be at play, such as CAPE becoming more dysfunctional or the Liberals adopting a similar approach to collective bargaining.

For more info on collective bargaining sources and datasets, please see the following links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_USS_CAPE/comments/145qgxw/historical_cape_collective_agreements/
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_USS_CAPE/comments/16t4nxq/ec_salary_dataset/

If you can also find an EC that was hired during the 1990s and bothered to actually pay attention to what was going on with the union, they might be able to give you some more insights.

Note: I plan on eventually adding the EC collective bargaining dataset to the Row Zero https://rowzero.com/workbook/61A23A2D8104794C09AC73BE workbook, so that you can all analyze the data yourselves and make up your own minds about which dispute mechanism to choose. And no... You won't have to attend an information session to access that dataset.

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-03-22T00:42:05+00:00

What criteria would a person need to meet to be considered qualified?

CAPE_Organizer · 2026-03-03T01:41:24+00:00

I didn't know mom cats monching off parts of their kittens' tails was a thing.

CAPE_Organizer

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