The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) is a Canadian trade union operating solely in the province of Alberta. With approximately 100,000 members as of March 2025, it is Alberta's largest union. AUPE is a union with members employed in government, health care, education, boards and agencies, municipalities, and private companies.
As of 2025, AUPE has 33 locals and administers more than 150 separate collective agreements. Notable employers of AUPE members include the Government of Alberta, Alberta Health Services, Covenant Health, University of Calgary, Northern and Southern Alberta Institutes of Technology, Edmonton Catholic Schools, and ATB Financial.
As of 2014, the union had a staff of more than 100 employees at its headquarters in Edmonton and seven regional offices across Alberta, including Peace River, Grande Prairie, Athabasca, Camrose, Red Deer, Calgary and Lethbridge.
AUPE has its origins in the Civil Service Association of Alberta, founded in 1919 to represent "civil servants," as direct employees of the Alberta government were then known. It became a legal union with the power to bargain collectively in 1977. AUPE remains active in the union movement and in provincial issues in Alberta. In the fall of 2007, it undertook a major campaign to press for changes in Alberta's labour laws, which ban strikes by most AUPE members. Despite those bans, AUPE members have taken illegal strike action on several occasions to press their demands for collective agreements.
Membership The vast majority of AUPE's members come under one of two pieces of legislation, the Alberta Labour Relations Code and the Public Service Employees Relations Act. One small unit comes under federal Canadian labour legislation.
AUPE categorizes its membership into four sectors for administrative purposes: Government services: direct employees of the Government of Alberta, with approximately 25,000 members. Health care: employees of health care providers, including Alberta Health Services, as well as other public, private and not-for-profit facilities, over 55,000 members. Education: non-academic employees of universities, community colleges, technical institutes and school boards, more than 11,000 members. Boards, agencies, and local government: employees of quasi-independent boards set up by the government of Alberta, government agencies, and municipal governments, as well as ATB Financial (a wholly owned provincial crown corporation) and Alberta Terminals Ltd., a private grain-handling company and division of Cargill that was formerly a government agency. Altogether this sector includes more than 4,000 members.
AUPE members pay union dues of 1.25% of their base pay. Members do not pay dues on shift or weekend differential pay, or on overtime pay.
Change over time In the mid-1990s, AUPE saw its membership fall due to the privatization of some government-run services during the provincial leadership of Premier Ralph Klein. Membership fell to about 35,000 in 1995. However, under the leadership of Dan MacLennan, a Calgary jail guard who was elected in 1997, AUPE rebuilt itself and saw its membership surpass 60,000. MacLennan's efforts were aided by increasing moderation in the policies of the Klein government in the years after the cuts of the mid-1990s, as well as by rapid economic and population growth in the province of Alberta.
Doug Knight was elected president in a by-election in 2006 after MacLennan left the union to pursue a career in the private sector. Dramatic growth continued under Knight, with membership reaching 67,000 in June 2007.
Guy Smith was president of AUPE from October 2009 until 2025.
Affiliation AUPE was a component part of the National Union of Public and General Employees until 2001, when it was suspended by that organization in a dispute over an organizing campaign involving members of another union. At its annual convention in 2006, delegates voted to formally disaffiliate AUPE from NUPGE, and by association the Canadian Labour Congress and the Alberta Federation of Labour.
History
The Civil Service Association of Alberta AUPE began life on March 26, 1919, when a small group of Alberta government employees held a founding meeting in north Edmonton's First Presbyterian Church. They agreed to incorporate the Civil Service Association of Alberta (CSA), and elected Judson Lambe as their first president. They adopted a crest that declared: "Unity Strength Protection."
The CSA held its first annual convention in February 1921 at a total cost of $202.65. Eighteen delegates and 11 Provincial Executive members attended. They chose a Public Works employee, W.T. Aiken, as their new president. And, despite the attitudes of some politicians, civil servants were in those days highly respected and valued in society.
From the start, the CSA's leaders made progress. In response to their concerns about patronage, the government appointed a Civil Service Commissioner in 1923. They bargained pay and working conditions through an advisory joint council established by the United Farmers of Alberta government that same year.
CSA historical milestones include: Pensions in 1923. Group life insurance in 1934. Dues check-off in 1947. Mileage rates in 1948. A 40-hour week in 1955. Four weeks' vacation after 24 years in 1956. A classification appeal procedure in 1957. The first CSA agreement with a board in 1958 — for Branch 23 at the University of Alberta Hospital. Medical premiums half covered by the employer in 1967. New legislation that recognized the CSA as sole bargaining agent for employees of the Crown, as well as certain boards and agencies, in 1968.
The Creation of AUPE
While the CSA had grown enormously in size and vitality by the late 1970s, surpassing 30,000 members, its leaders recognized the need for legal recognition as a full-fledged union.
In the spring of 1974, 300 members in Department of Health & Social Development demonstrated against an arbitrary change in statutory holiday entitlements. The government backed down. That same season, employees of the Alberta Liquor Control Board went on strike for 10 days, winning substantial wage increases.
This unrest culminated on October 1, 1974, when 12,500 direct government employees walked off the job for two days because the government had arbitrarily imposed a pay increase six days before bargaining was due to commence. They won their point again, and the government agreed to negotiate in good faith.
On June 14, 1976, the Legislature repealed the Civil Service Association of Alberta Act, and the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees was legally born. On the day of its formation, AUPE boasted a budget of $3.4 million. T.W. (Bill) Broad, the last president of the CSA, was chosen as the first president of the new union at its founding convention held November 18–20, 1976, at the Chateau Lacombe Hotel in Edmonton.
Convention decisions, however, still had to be approved by government, as the union operated under the Societies Act. This changed on November 17, 1977, when AUPE met to change its status into an unincorporated trade union. All aspects of the CSA were transferred into the new union. The Public Service Employee Relations Act (PSERA) received Royal Assent on May 18, 1977, giving AUPE bargaining rights for each group of employees for which it had a collective agreement. These arrangements were ratified at the union's second convention at the Palliser Hotel in Calgary.
However, PSERA had been passed over the objections of AUPE and other unions, who remembered Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed's 1971 pre-election promises of full bargaining rights for public employees. Instead, Lougheed's government passed the most restrictive labour legislation in Canada, which included compulsory arbitration designed to favour employers.
AUPE's first decade
AUPE's inception took place in 1976, the same year that Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced wage and price controls with an Anti-Inflation Board, making it illegal for employers to negotiate pay increases above a certain guideline.
AUPE worked on consolidating its strength under the leadership of John Booth, who took over the presidency in 1977. Under Booth, AUPE built a reputation as a union willing to openly contest the government of Alberta.
At the 1979 Convention, Booth asked delegates to make 1980 a "test year" for negotiations. AUPE then took on the government with its "Apples & Oranges Campaign," a reference to claim by government members that comparing 47-per-cent pay raises for MLAs with single-digit pay raises for public employees was like comparing apples and oranges.
Unsuccessful negotiations were followed by strike action, and more than 3,000 AUPE members hit the bricks in the summer of 1980 — fully aware that their action was illegal. AUPE won that strike, effectively challenging existing arbitration rules and the ban on strikes. By AUPE's fifth annual convention in October 1980, membership stood at over 41,000 — half of them women.
In 1982, AUPE moved into its new headquarters on 170 Street in Edmonton and established regional offices throughout the province. When the government tried to impose on arbitrators a ceiling of eight percent on annual pay increases, AUPE launched a campaign called "The Apple Rides Again" — forcefully reminding the government of what had happened in 1980. With the threat of conflict in the air, AUPE won major gains at arbitration, far in excess of the premier's "Eight Per Cent Solution."
Hard times hit Alberta in 1983 and the government began to cut jobs. AUPE's membership had touched 52,500, but by 1984 had dipped to 47,500. The Union responded with aggressive organizing in municipal government and the health care sector.
Patricia (Pat) Wocknitz was elected president at the beginning of this difficult period. One of her first acts was to call a special constitutional convention in 1985 to reduce the Provincial Executive to 28 members. The government began to step up privatization and AUPE's membership shrank that year to 46,000.
The Dark Decade — 1987 to 1996
The years 1987 to 1996 were a challenging decade for AUPE — with layoffs and privatization taking place under the provincial government led by Premier Ralph Klein.
In 1987, Wocknitz met with Lougheed's replacement, Premier Don Getty, to negotiate an early retirement incentive program that would combine voluntary job sharing, voluntary extended leave, and re-employment counseling. That year, AUPE filed more than 1,000 grievances, setting the tone for the period.
AUPE organized aggressively to make up for membership losses in the government, but bargaining became harder than ever and gains were marginal. As cutbacks continued through 1988, membership dipped further and revenues sagged.
By 1989, privatization and deregulation were in full swing and the government was floating trial balloons about privatization of some of its most important human services. Membership continued to decline, mainly through cuts to the government service, and AUPE faced substantial debt, reduced revenues and crippling building costs.
When bargaining stalled in 1990 and government pressed ahead with its divestment of people services, social workers in Local 006 led a 22-day strike over workload and staffing. Subsequently, correctional officers in Local 003 held a seven-day strike over pensions and early retirement, which they won. General support services employees in Local 054 also held a one-day strike at the University of Alberta Hospital.
For its members, AUPE existed as a defender of public services. In 1992, however, the union found itself in the midst of a Progressive Conservative leadership campaign alive with promises of further privatization and downsizing. Negotiations that year yielded an average pay increase of two per cent.