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CKMS Community News, Newsroom, Shows

CKMS News -2025-03-19- Strike continues as regional workers demand “a fair wage for essential work”.

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CKMS News -2025-03-19- CUPE 1656 strike continues as regional workers demand “a fair wage for essential work”

dan kellar
Kitchener, ON – Midway through week 3 of their strike, CUPE 1656 workers want the region to return to the table with “a fair deal”. The latest offer from the regional government, which they called “competitive”, was tabled on March 15th but was quickly rejected by the union as inadequate.

A rally is planned for 6:00pm on March 19th at the Region of Waterloo headquarters. The rally is taking place ahead of a regional council meeting. The region has said its “goal is to reach an agreement that continues to support employees and is fair for residents.” 

The union represents full and part-time workers who clean drinking water, provide airport services,  maintain regional roads and emergency vehicles, and provide landfill services to the Region of Waterloo. Additionally the union represents the trade workers including millwrights, HVAC, plumbing and signals who “keep water, traffic, and buildings running”. 

This show features an interview with CUPE 1656 president Phil Dominas.

CKMS Community News, Newsroom, Shows

CKMS News – 2021-01-28 – On the road to unionization for academic workers at the University of Waterloo

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Host: Shalaka Jadhav

One of many ongoing and underlying issues that the pandemic has brought attention to includes workers rights, safety, and wages. Across various workplaces, the importance of unions in giving workers a collective voice in the workplace has amplified, and this extends to the students at an institution we may not often think of: the University of Waterloo, and its student workers.

In this segment, I’ll be in conversation with Lynne Sargent and Nicolay Videnov, students who are part of the Committee to Organize uWaterloo, a grassroots campaign to unionize the academic workers at the University of Waterloo.  Their interviews are complimented by Graham Cox, a researcher and organizer at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, referred to as CUPE during this show.  With over 700,000 members, CUPE is Canada’s largest union. CUPE represents 70,400 workers spanning 233 collective agreements in the post-secondary education sector.

To learn more about Organize uWaterloo, check out organizeuw.org.

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This program is a part of the “Local Journalism Initiative” grant program and is funded by the Community Radio Fund of Canada, the Government of Canada, and the CKMS Newsroom.

Check out the archived versions of  this program and other episodes on radiowaterloo.ca/news., and other stories commissioned under the Local Journalism Initiative at canada-info.ca.

You can  follow us on twitter @RadioWaterloo. If you want to get in touch with comments, or ideas about stories to cover, email us at news@radiowaterloo.ca.

Music for this episode was courtesy of Dylan Prowse.