Year: 2009
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Born in Germany in 1946, Peter Neuschafer immigrated to Canada in 1952. In the 1970s he joined the Edmonton municipal payroll department whose employees were organized by the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He participated in the local’s ten-day strike in autumn 1976, but the improved pay and benefits that they won were curtailed by federal wage and price controls.
After CUPE National rejected financial support to the strikers, the local bolted and formed Civic Service Union (CSU) 52. Neuschafer served in the independent union as shop steward, trustee, and negotiator. As a negotiation committee member, he helped win a $500 tax-free health spending account for expenses beyond the union’s health plan. Neuschafer was elected Vice-President of the local in 1990. He later served as Acting President, but eventually returned to his committee roles. He recalls the 1990s as a difficult decade for collective bargaining, with austere city management largely refusing wage increases. That led CSU 52 to join other municipal unions, including CUPE and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), to form the Coalition of Edmonton Civic Unions (CECU), which fostered solidarity in bargaining demands among Edmonton’s municipal unions.
Keywords: Austerity in 1990s; City of Edmonton; Coalition of Edmonton Civic Unions; Edmonton Telephones (EdTel); Health spending account; Municipal workers; Municipal Unions; Privatization; Solidarity in bargaining.
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See also: Civic Service Union 52; Canadian Union of Provincial Employees; Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta