Year: 2023
Location: Jasper Park Lodge
Profile: Serena Nelson is a proud Indigenous woman with who has worked both as a clerk and a manager in the grocery sector. An activist in the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 401, she serves as a workplace steward at the Safeway store in Lloydminster. Born to a First Nation family in Saskatchewan, she spent much of her childhood in non-Indigenous communities. She describes the discrimination and bullying that she and her sister encountered in these settings. Nelson was introduced to UFCW while working in Lloydminster, first as a manager in a Superstore being struck by UFCW, and then as a retail clerk and UFCW activist in a Safeway store. She describes how she became a steward and her subsequent efforts to build membership engagement, beginning with a ratification vote for a new collective agreement, and then with day-to-day representation for fellow members. She continually contends with expressions of a racism that she encounters in the community and in her workplace, but sees some hope for the future in education and the truth and reconciliation process.
Keywords: Collective agreements; Grocery sector; Membership participation in unions; Racist bullying; Retail work; Steward; Truth and Reconciliation; Union education.
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See also: Indigenous Labour in Alberta; Systemic Racism in Alberta; United Food and Commercial Workers; Women and Work in Alberta