Sophie J. Boardman, Communications Officer
June 21, 2025
Introduction
This was my first time attending a CUPE NS event and union convention and am grateful for the opportunity to have attended. This was an excellent learning experience as someone who is new to taking on a more engaged role in our local and unions as whole. As an American (international student at Dalhousie from 2016-2020, 2022-2025), I learned more things about NS politics that will improve my communications ability – context is important! My report will be a highlight of the most interesting things to me (this report is highly biased as I’m only human). I am confident that my other 11 fellow delegates that have more knowledge of other issues will speak to them in their report.
General Review
All of the executives gave their reports for the year over the course of convention. I was disappointed in the content of all of the reports besides Nan (past president) and Ty, the Young-Worker VP. As a first time convention delegate and newer to CUPE, I wanted to hear more about their work besides “attending meetings and voting on motions”. Mostly I just found it strange that people read their reports verbatim. It’s important to have a report, but we were essentially “read aloud to” for 2ish hours. It was also clear that some of the executives had different ideas about leadership. One notable remark was by an area VP who said not much activity had happened in the past year due to local unions not initiating any campaigns. While I understand locals must reach out to CUPE NS, it’s disheartening to hear that this is the only way to have a relationship. For example, not all locals have the capacity to reach out or know when. More resources from CUPE NS describing how they can amplify and support locals and better proactiveness would be nice. The post-secondary sector doesn’t have a caucus, so it may actually be different for other sectors. More on this later.
We had many guest speakers give speeches or educational talks. My favourites were Claudia Chender, who is the leader of the NS NDP, and CAMIC, CUPE Atlantic Maritime Region Indigenous Council. Having CAMIC speak to us or help with Indigenous related issues could be useful. While I mostly enjoyed all the guest speakers, I think there were too many. We had lots of constitutional amendments and resolutions to work through (as is the business of convention) and these kept being pushed when we ran over time. It was clear more time needed to be allocated to these two activities. Additionally, I felt there was not adequate enough time to get to know candidates running for positions. I wish there were more informal opportunities to get to know candidates outside of caucuses and the convention floor. Convention structure does not leave much time to get to know candidates, especially when time after convention floor activities ended people went to find food most times. There was a couple of hours + an hour of social time before the banquet where these informal meetings could have happened. While we did get to overlap with our Central VP and chat a couple times, there wasn’t that opportunity with the other candidates. I am hopeful the planning committee takes these things into account for future conventions.
Caucus Overviews
I attended the Diversity Caucus during lunch on the second day of convention. It was very informal and there were between 10 to 15 of us. I was surprised to see such a small number of people, but apparently it was triple the number of people that attended last years convention (wow)! Out of the 250 something (can’t remember the exact number), it was disheartening that such a small percentage of delegates CUPE NS considered diverse attended the convention. I think CUPE NS and our own local needs to make strides in being more inclusive and ensuring that diverse folks engage with us. There were also elections and it was great getting to hear more from the diversity VP, Nimrod, who was quite new in the role, as he was the alternate until a month before convention. It was quite an informal space and mainly just a chance to connect. We did discuss one possible resolution or something that we could work on together as a caucus for the next year. We gave the CUPE NS staff person our emails so we could have some check-in meetings throughout the year if desired. I hope this networking opportunity will be fruitful and to hear what other folks are up to.
I also attended the young-worker caucus, which was held after all the scheduled events of one day of convention. Ty, the current young-worker VP, was able to talk about the role and how flexible it is. She was empowered to jump in and do her own initiative, which proved successful as her care kits were a success! It’s great the CUPE NS executive has this position to empower young-workers. While I had hoped another candidate, Madison, would be elected, Ty was reelected and Madison is the alternate. I hope Ty continues to do great work with CUPE NS and that we are able to keep in touch and network. Again, there was a small but mighty number of us and the number had apparently tripled again since last year. This was great to observe and I’m glad the constitutional amendment to raise the age from 30 to 35 did not pass. As a young person reaching the end (I’m 27), the generational divide between myself and the kids I TA who are usually 18 to 21 is felt. Just because you may be younger than most of your co-workers does not necessarily warrant an age adjustment to the constitution. Outreach to fellow young-workers and making convention less daunting to be engaged must occur before such a drastic change should occur.
I also had an interesting discussion with Nimrod and some other members about the possibility of putting forward a constitutional amendment that would allow each local to send a young-worker and diversity member. These could be additional spots or take up one of the allocated spots to locals. I advocate for an additional spot myself and think this would increase engagement and give people the chance to attend future conventions by almost direct invitation.
Post-Secondary Education Crisis
I think all of 3912’s delegates did a good job of getting the word out about Christine. Our number of delegates and with most people sporting our pink 3912 2022 Strike shirts meant we had high visibility. When I had the opportunity to talk to people, the conversations were mostly about our sector instead of Christine. While I tried to insert snippets of Christine’s wealth of experience, it felt like most people zeroed in on the fact Christine comes from this sector people know very little about (mostly presented in the news). The constant surprise of people finding out about our low wages and high chances of not finding work and then with Bill 12 and big cuts happening, the future of our sector sounded scary to many. While we had common threads with the other delegates (low wages, employment harassment and power imbalances), the lack of knowledge of a sector within the CUPE NS sector was too high. The fact that staff and other locals did not even know we existed or were part of CUPE raised significant concerns for myself.
While I understand we are all busy humans, 3912 has been part of CUPE NS for a while. We have lots of members and it is clearer than ever just how precarious we are, so the lack of knowledge of our union peers is astounding. Our mere 12 delegate presence clearly rattled those who had been regular Convention attendees. CUPE NS also needs to do better. It is time that we have our own sectoral council. I’m glad that our President, Lauren, has already had conversations with the new CUPE NS president about getting this rolling. It is clearer to me just how important communication of our sector to the public to increase knowledge and networking is important. That is to say, we should not neglect our own members, but if we need to spend so much time justifying how precarious we are and the struggles we face, support will not be as fast as it could be and there are less people in our corner so to speak. It’s also up to 3912 to keep feeding these networks of support!
Solidarity + Support
While we continue to face barriers, there were good things to come out of convention this year. Both of our submitted resolutions, which were (1) financial and human support from CUPE NS to the post-secondary education sector and (2) for CUPE NS to join and provide support to the Justice for Workers movement, were passed with unanimous support from the floor. It was uplifting to see support from all delegates. Fellow delegates (Lachlan, Christine, Lauren, Rena, Larissa, Alec) spoke to these with great enthusiasm and made 3912 proud! It was also great that some spoke in support of other resolutions. This solidarity was important and shows CUPE NS we stand with others! It’s great that we had support from 5047, Adsum House, education, and highway workers for Christina and we must continue to maintain these relationships if possible.
Communications
One of the presentations was from CUPE NS staff Matt Stella, who spoke to us about using Action Network. I think using this platform would be ideal for the following reasons. First, it’s free through CUPE. We would save money by not using Mailchimp anymore (woohoo!) and we would be able to access CUPE staff and Action Network staff for training and help. With our current configuration of tagging members by unit and job (PT or TA) in Mailchimp and the fear that “too much contact and emails” would cause people to unsubscribe would not be the case with Action Network. There is increased functionality that would allow members to unsubscribe from certain types of communication but they would always receive important emails about unit meetings, AGMs, and strike votes. Additionally, Action Network is built for campaigning and building networks, which would help support us as we head into mobilization. This platform would enable us to create campaign pages and petitions, send texts if wanted, and create events. We used Action Network to vote at convention. This would be an interesting and viable option as our other platforms have high cost with our number of members. Conversations about use of this platform are ongoing and I hope to share developments on this as the summer continues.
Conclusion
While Christine did not get elected, the central caucus did elect Lauren as the alternate VP, Larissa, Erica, and I were elected to committees. Having 3912 be present and continue to worm our way through CUPE NS will be key for visibility and education as we hopefully keep making our mark. I hope 3912 will continue to send delegates to future conventions for networking, being part of committees, and general education for some of our newer members. As a TA, my time with 3912 is limited but hopefully this will not be the end of unionism and its values in my life. Thank you to all delegates for making this such a great experience, as I had a great time getting to know all of you more. Thanks to the membership for the continued support as your CO. This was an invaluable experience and I hope TAs consider attending conventions in the future!