As the COVID-19 pandemic continues there does seem to be a turn in the right direction.

As everyone is aware we had to cancel our last 3 general membership meetings. Due to that we did not have our June elections. Now that our Region has moved in to stage 3 of re-opening we are very hopeful we can resume meetings in September and hopefully have our elections in October.  When we can confirm those details we let everyone know.

With the surrounding Regions now having mandatory face mask requirement we are in the process of purchasing reusable masks for our members. When they arrive we will try to figure out how best to get them to our members who would like them.

Again we want to take this time to thank all our members for continuing all their hard work and sometimes thankless work that the members of the public rely on us for.

If COVID-19 had shown us anything is how vitally important PUBLIC SERVICES are to the community.

Stay Safe, Stay Strong,

In Solidarity,
Mike Eckert

President, CUPE 791

A sincere thank you to all our CUPE 791 members from the City of Kitchener and The Waterloo Wellington LHIN for keeping both our work places running during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The commitment to your communities and your professions speaks volumes for our union.

CUPE 791 executives are very proud of our members and know we all will be stronger and more united going through these difficult times.

It may be stormy now, but it can’t rain forever!

Stay safe, stay strong.

In Solidarity,

Mike Eckert

President CUPE 791

Hello Everyone,

Due to the recent outbreak of COVID-19 we are making the decision to cancel both our Exec meeting and the GMM for April.

We hope to see everyone at our May GMM where nominations for June elections will take place.

Please stay safe, respect social distancing and make sure to check in on family, friends.

In solidarity,

CUPE 791 Executives

We had elections last night for 2 Member at Large positions for COK. We would like to congratulate Catherine Valente and Debra Schiedel for being nominated and accepting the positions. It is the 1st time in several years that the COK has a full complement of Executives.

We shared at the meeting that we now have our first dates scheduled for Bargaining, March 24, April 21 and April 22nd.

Our $1000 monthly donation for February is going to Food 4 kids https://www.food4kids.ca/ and for March it is going to KW Counselling Services https://www.kwcounselling.com/

Thanks again to the 23 members whom attend our meeting. Hope to see everyone again on April 14th for the next GMM.

Please show support to our fellow CUPE members by clicking on the link below and taking a minute to send a message to the President and Vice President of Trent University asking for job security for our members.

https://cupe.on.ca/supporttrentinstructors/

We want to thank everyone whom attended our Special Membership Meeting where we presented our bargaining proposal for COK members on Feb 12th. It ended up being a later night than most expected but we did get a lot accomplished and want to say a special thanks to all the members that made motions on the floor to make changes to the proposal. That’s how it’s suppose to work –  the Bargaining committee is working for the members and if they want to make changes then we do what the majority of members want.
We will try to keep members as up to date as we can during the bargaining process.

Thank you,

The Bargaining Committee

Hello everyone,

We have decided to cancel our General Membership meeting in February and will having a special membership meeting where we will only be discussing our Bargaining Proposal and voting on it.

We had a great response to our survey – 275 responses, thank you!

The meeting will be in the Viewing lounge at the Auditorium on February 12^th at 6:00pm. We do want as many people as possible to attend so children are welcome at this meeting but they will have no vote.

Hope to see you there,

Bargaining Committee

Thank you to all our members who attended our General Membership Meeting on Tuesday.  We had our biggest turnout in over 2 years. We had 30 members attend. Our Executives were very happy seeing so many new faces at our meeting and hope that you will return monthly. It’s important to have great membership engagement.

We had 2 nominations for the COK Member at large positions – Debra Schiedel and Catherine Valente. Currently there are 2 vacancies. Elections will be held in March. We will not have a Membership Meeting in February, we will be having a special meeting on February 12th to present and vote on our Bargaining Proposal. More information to follow on that.

Our $1000 monthly donation will be going to the KW cancer society.

We also had our first winners of our draws at the meeting last night congratulations to James Hilborn ($200) and Sheryl Rice Menezes ($50) . A motion was put on the floor to change the 2 draws of $200 and $50 to 5 draws of $50 which was adopted for all future GMM meetings this year.

The executives want to thank all our members whom attended our December GMM.  We did pass our 2020 budget and had a good discussion regarding job evaluations. Our meeting did go longer than most and we appreciate our members staying for the whole  meeting.

We selected 2 charities for our monthly donation (for November / December) $1000 in toys to Toy Mountain and $1000 towards the  Family Lounge at Grand River Hospital.

We like to wish all our members and families a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Thank you for everyone who attending our Christmas / Holiday party last night at the Sunbridge Hotel. If was our best turnout, over 200 members, retirees, family and friends attending. My fellow Executives appreciate that our members made time in their schedules to celebrate with us and it was great to hear all the  positive comments we received last night for the event.

Thanks again to the Christmas committee – Mona Bauman, Scott Gibson, Aimee Proulx, LynAnn McNulty and Marina Dotzert for all their work throughout the year to make sure our members had a great time.