Before the peak season lull, the Building Worker Power campaign was moving ahead full force as our eight Regional Organizers visited Locals throughout the country to promote workfloor empowerment, collect contacts and, most importantly, recruit workfloor captains to grow our capacity to fight back against CPC and the government. From October until mid-December, roughly 150 workfloor visits and meetings were conducted and over 2,450 members signed up to receive campaign updates. Considering the little time we’ve been operating and how few Regional Organizers (ROs) we have currently covering such a geographically spread-out membership, the campaign is performing admirably.
Special acknowledgement should be given to our ROs for rising to the challenge of their roles. Prior to these first workfloor visits, most of our ROs did not have experience with public speaking or organizing these kinds of meetings. In many cases, to be the first representative showing up in a National capacity on a workfloor since the 2018 back-to-work legislation and the pandemic is no comfortable thing, as member frustration has accumulated for good reason and craves an outlet. Our ROs have weathered many storms explaining that, yes, the union can do more, but only if we’re collectively willing to get involved in some way to support empowering our own workfloors. Members have predominantly responded well to this honesty and our advocacy to focus on what can be positively done to strengthen CUPW going forward.