Year: 2019
Location: Edmonton
Profile: When Susana Runge emigrated from Mexico to Canada, she already had a career in producing educational television for government Education and Health ministries. These were worker-focused. She arrived in Edmonton with a strong conviction that education was the key to getting people in poverty the help they needed in their situations. Over the course of a variety of work experiences in her field of expertise in the television department of hospitals, Runge experienced both sexism in a male-dominated field and the worker solidarity of union protections. The victim of government cuts to health care, Runge moved on to work with Edmonton’s Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op (MCHB) where she feels acutely the need to “give back to community” and help immigrant families and workers negotiate Canadian society, especially temporary foreign workers. “I have gone through what it means to come and live in a place that is different, what it means to try to find work.” Through the New Alberta Workers Program, now wrapped up, Runge was able to help those new-to-Alberta workers know more about their Health and Safety rights and benefits as workers.
Keywords: Cultural brokers; Health spending cuts; Health education for workers; Health worker unions; Mexican immigrants; Multicultural Health Brokers Co-op (MCHB); Sexism in male-dominated fields; Temporary Foreign Workers.
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See also: Systemic Racism in Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta