Year: 2007
Location: Edmonton
Profile: David Coles was president of the Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union (CEP) from 2006 to 2014 and played a large role in CEP’s subsequent merger with the Canadian Auto Workers to produce Unifor in 2013. Earlier, Coles was president of the Vancouver Island CEP local for 11 years and served for 6 years as Western regional vice-president while also serving as the Alberta Federation of Labour officer responsible for organizing and for political action.
Coles had worked as a process operator in a newsprint mill in Crofton, BC. As CEP leader, he had to confront the collapse of the newsprint industry which he attributed to lack of investment, failure to modernize, and the drop in newspaper sales. Coles denounced Canada’s export of raw resources, including unprocessed bitumen, and the privatization of Crown corporations. The export of raw bitumen left Celanese without the ability to purchase feedstock at a reasonable price. So the company sold out to Blackstone, an especially vicious example of what uncontrolled corporate capitalism represents. Coles defends CEP accepting a breakaway from the Carpenters Union to form a construction wing within CEP as provision of an alternative to Canadian workers tired of foreign union control over them.
Keywords: Bitumen; Blackstone; Canadian Auto Workers; Communications, Energy, and Paperworkers Union; Construction wing of CEP; Export of resources; Newsprint industry; Privatization; Process operator; Unifor formation.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Alberta Federation of Labour; Celanese Edmonton: Workers’ Stories; Meatpacking Workers in Alberta; Summer of ’86 in Alberta