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Article: From the ground up: the new OPSEU
- Article from:
- Our Times
- Article date:
- July 1, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Our Times Publishing Inc. Jul/Aug 1996. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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STATIONARY ENGINEER MICHAEL LAPORTE met Jim Paul for the first time at the end of November last year. In normal times, Paul works as a grievance officer for the Ontario Public Service Union, but these were not normal times. He had come with some urgency to speak to members of Laporte's union local at Toronto's Queen Street Mental Health Centre. Laporte is president of Local 531.
Says Paul, "We wanted to get people up to speed on the progress in bargaining." Equally important, OPSEU's executive board and staff needed to know whether or not they had the membership behind them. "We needed to know if we were going to achieve a vote in favour of going on strike," says Paul, "in the event ...