U.F.C.W. Local 247 has continued to support the Community Programs started by Local 2000 in 1992 and furthered our commitment to create a more compassionate Canadian society. Through Government run programs we have managed to gain funding from Human Resource Skills Development Canada to pay for all our programs, with little or no cost to our membership.

But the question still remains, why would our Union have such strong community involvement? Through government funding, we have been able to create some of the most innovative programs recognized across Canada to help workers and their families. Proundly, our programs have been developed by our union members and used in communities across Canada.

In 1992, U.F.C.W. Local 2000 negotiated the first ever Provincially recognized meat cutting apprenticeship with Canada Safeway and Save-on-Foods. The companies were looking for savings, so we arranged an agreement to have the apprenticeship program started so a new hire would receive 50% of the journeypersons rate of pay and then receive a 10% increase every 6 months as the person learned more skills. Thisprogram was very successful and to this day many of our meat cutters are the ones who went through the apprenticeship program. The companies as we know have now moved on to a different system that isn't as successful and positive, but in the early 90's we moved ahead together jointly on a very positive project. The success of this program was noticed by some local politicians, one being Joy McPhail, past president of the provincial N.D.P. Joy McPhail being a strong proponent of women in the trades asked our Local to do a Women in Trades meat cutting program and enlightened us on how to apply for Government training funding. We then met with Safeway and Save-on-Foods and struck a joint committee on women in the trades meat cutting, they agreed to hire a full class of women apprentices. U.F.C.W. Local 2000 applied for its first Government grant and received $200,000 for 16 women to go through a pre-apprenticeship program at Vancouver Community College. This program set the stage for up to 400 more intakes of different kinds of programs we have developed for unemployed workers.

During the first program for women in trades, we ran into a challenge. For these individuals to get enough hands on experience we needed to have a lot of carcasses of meat such as beef, lamb, veal and pork. We did not want so sell $70,000 worth of meat to the public and compete against our own stores so we donated all the meat to not for profit women's transition houses for abused women.

These donations started a trend that a lot of our members probably don't recognize. In all our community programs, we donate anything our trainees make to the community.

After doing two successful Women in Trades programs, the Government of Canada asked us to help more unemployed workers. So we developed a Sausage Making program for unemployed workers because we decided as a Union in 1993 that we could help the unemployed better than any fly by night training institute so we developed a system for all our future programs.

1) One thing most training institutes, Business, Government and Unions had forgotten is that most (if not all) workers have to deal with feelings of fear or an uncomfortable feeling of insecurity while going through the transition of unemployment.

So within all the Training Centre initiatives, including our membership programs, we have included conflict resolution and positive thinking so that a worker can look at their own feelings and become more comfortable with making decisions on personal growth and career exploration.

2) Deal with the skill-base of the program. In the Sausage Making program it covered all aspects such as recipes, smoking, patties, stuffing and sales. They not only made pork, beef and breakfast sausages but also all European sausages at Vancouver Community College.

3) The Third component for all our community-based programs is the donation or a service to a needy charity.

With the Sausage Making program we made $30,000 worth of sausage every 3 months and to not compete with our stores, we donated the entire product to the Salvation Army Harbour Light Food Kitchen.

Each student in the program would also go on the food line and serve our sausage to underprivileged people twice during the course. This project lasted 4 years with about 15 intakes. According to the Salvation Army, we served 89,000 homeless people in this time period.

As a Union we fulfilled our belief in treating all workers with dignity and respect. Our Executive and leadership have supported these types of programs for over 12 years and our Union is recognized for its great work Nationwide.