Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
Is CUPE Still On Strike?
Share:
by jr | November 7, 2007 at 08:29 am
623 views | 5 Recommendations | 5 comments
Photos
Last Thursday, Nov. 1, a Carnegie member went to the Computer Room on the 3rd floor of Carnegie, just after 2 p.m. and found it locked and in darkness. The excuse was that there was "no volunteer" to sit in there to sign-in people and kill time by web surfing. Never mind that Director Ethel Whitty, who makes $104,000 a year, and her entourage of staff have offices just a few meters from the Computer Room.
Whitty retaliates if bloggers mention the locked doors and the word "Whitty" in the same sentence. At both a public Board meeting and a Community Relations Meeting this summer, she made slanderous remarks about bloggers engaged in "defamation" and "character assassination". She did not manage to provide even one example to support these claims.
On Friday, a Carnegie member went to the Learning Center just after 2 p.m. and found students being evacuated by teacher Lucy Alderson. There was a volunteer receptionist there, Jack, but the highly paid Alderson said she wanted two volunteers. She didn't have them so she closed shop. Witnesses don't recall Alderson lifting a finger to find a volunteer. There are CUPE members on staff who are paid to co-ordinate volunteers, but they too let the Learning Center close. Rika Uto, a CUPE member who plays a supervisory role in relation to the Learning Center, was present that day but that didn't prevent the doors from being locked. These people are well paid and just got a 20% raise (that's what it works out to with compounding). So why aren't the jobs being done?
On Saturday afternoon, the Learning Center was shut tight and in darkness again. Unlike during the week, it is the sole responsibility of CUPE members on Saturdays to keep the Learning Center open. On Saturday evening, when the Computer Room was scheduled to be open from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., people again arrived to find it locked and in darkness.
These are not the only examples of doors being locked at Carnegie over the past month. The DTES Enquirer has been told that doors are being locked on a semi-regular basis.
What is Ethel Whitty, who takes her orders from City Hall, doing about the problem of CUPE members dragging their asses? She is writing PR material that covers CUPE asses . Look at what Whitty read to a crowd at a by-election and Board meeting last Thursday evening -- that would be just hours after Downtown Eastside Residents had found the Computer Room locked -- in the Carnegie Theatre:
"Staff have returned to work with enthusiasm and good will and quickly resumed providing the services they love to offer."
----------------------------------------
Read another recent story by Jr: Fraudulent Evidence Found in United Way Police Complaint
http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspot.com/2007/10/fraudulent-evidence-found-in-united-way.html
Advertisement
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (5)
at 10:21 on November 8th, 2007
jr, thanks for this. I'm not surprised that any person employed by the current City Hall would be less than interested in helping the poor. Good for you for keeping your eye on Carnegie for us.
Could you take a photo of the closed computer room and post it here for us? It would add a lot to the story, I feel.
at 18:57 on November 12th, 2007
Hello Jr.
I have been a volunteer at Carnegie Centre since the summer of 1983. That is almost 25 years. I must admit I am having a great deal of difficulty with your story. There are a few points I would like to focus on here.
1) When the strike was on Carnegie Centre provided basic services to the poor. They were provided with nourishing food in a comfortable environment every day the strike was on. There were some services not provided for security reasons and these included the Learning Centre and the Computer Room.
2) As a long term volunteer for the City of Vancouver, in one of this countries poorest postal codes, I must say I am proud of the work the volunteers do in Carnegie. We provide many services to the impoverished of our community. The programs are run by volunteers to ensure that no person has to pay to take part in an event or program unlike other community centres where the programs are provided by paid staff. Our volunteer run system of providing programs to the poor has been investigated by many cities wanting to copy what we do at Carnegie.
3) I get very irritated when I hear people complain that their program was not available to them because the volunteer didn't show up or they did not have enough volunteers to keep a program open. Maybe it would be a good idea to roll up your sleeves and get to work volunteering with your favourite area in Carnegie instead of complaining about a program not being open. The type of programming available at Carnegie is not and hopefully never will be the type that requires paid staff to work to maintain. Honorariums are he closest we will ever get to paid staff providing free programs and still be able to maintain them.
I do have more I could say about this article but I don't want to go on and on.
at 21:25 on November 15th, 2007
Bharbara,
Thanks for your feedback.
Carnegie has roughly a one million dollar wage bill so there is no excuse for services being regularly closed. The volunteer program was never meant to result in services being regularly closed.
The volunteer Co-ordinator, Colleen, and her Assistant, Sindi, together earn roughly one hundred thousand dollars a year but yet they regularly lock doors claiming that there is no volunteer. Why are we paying them then? Why can't they sit in the computer room themselves? Last Thursday, the poor were locked out of the computer room for 8 hours. This Thursday (today), the computer room was locked for another 8 hours. The current excuse is that somebody on welfare who would have volunteered got a job; another person on welfare has allergies. Again, there is a million dollars worth of staff -- with Ethel Whitty just a few meters from the computer room being paid a reported $104,000 a year -- yet whether key services are open is dependent on what is going on in the life of somebody on welfare.
Colleen, Sindi, Ethel, Dan, and many other staff members could have sat in that computer room. One volunteer was quite articulate in how he described the ultimate problem, "Ethel has no concept of what it's like to be without a computer."
There were other service closures this past week in addition to the eight hour closures two Thursday's in a row. We're not keeping track but just off the top of my head, I can tell you that on Saturday night the computer room was locked when it was supposed to be open until 10 p.m. Today the cafeteria was closed in the middle of the afternoon, although it opened later. And too often now, staff close it a little early.
There are very few services offered at Carnegie. On the third floor, there are two services: the computer room and the Learning Center. It is frustrating for poor people to come to the Center and find one or the other of these services closed, while Whitty sits in her office collecting a huge cheque.
It has been suggested that the Computer Room would be open more frequently WITHOUT STAFF. Some arrangement could be worked out whereby Carnegie Center members could work amongst themselves to keep it open. The computers are bolted down, so theft is unlikely. But even if there was theft, replacing a computer once in awhile would be less costly to the taxpayer than paying staff who are frequently denying the poor access to all computers in the room. It has been suggested that the computers be brought out into the 3rd floor lobby area where there are lots of people around to keep an eye on things. A few staff desks, like Whitty's and Dan Tetrault's, could be moved closer to the glass petition that separates staff offices from the lobby, so that staff could help keep an eye on things. This is only one suggestion. There are many options. But members, and increasingly taxpayers, are not happy with the status quo.
at 19:09 on January 20th, 2008
It is very interesting how people will write things about topics they really know nothing about. It is very obvious from your story that you really know or care very little about the actual workings of Carnegie Centre.
Might be a good idea to offer your services in the computer room to help alleviate your anxiety. If there were enough volunteers for the computer room I am certain Colleen would love to have the room open and available for members. But then again you really seem to have a hatred on for the place and the people working in it. It almost seems to me like you would like to see it closed down. Sounds to me like it is you who is not happy with the status quo.
About the cafeteria being closed in the middle of the day. The cafeteria closes so the kitchen staff and the volunteers can prepare the food and supplies for the dinner hour. This is done to ensure healthy cheap food can be prepared and served to the many people who depend on the Carnegie kitchen to eat. Have you ever volunteered in the kitchen. Somehow I doubt you have.
Basically what I hear from you in your ranting's is on the one hand, everyone who earns a living working in Carnegie is evil especially if they make a lot of money and on the other hand gimme, gimme and gimme more.
You should be ashamed to hide behind annonimity and do nothing but attack people who are working very hard in very difficult circumstances. You should try working at the corner of Main and Hastings for 25 years and then I would believe you have enough understanding of what is happening there to really understand what you are talking about.
at 16:39 on January 25th, 2008
As I read your comment today, I have been told that the staff at Carnegie locked low income Downtown Eastside residents out of the computer lab all afternoon. I went over there and saw the darkened room with my own eyes. Carnegie staff [CUPE members] are well paid to keep those services open to the public. The City pays over a $1 million dollar wage bill at Carnegie. The claim that key services are locked because a volunteer did not show up is no longer going to be tolerated by DTES residents.
You write, "You should be ashamed to hide behind annonimity (sic)...." You are well aware of why bloggers have to remain anonymous when criticizing Carnegie. You were part of the push to bar homeless William Simpson from the Carnegie Learning Center, after he was suspected of "tattletaling" to taxpayers via a blog about service closures at Carnegie and misleading statements fed to the media by Carnegie.
On the topic of Carnegie kitchen closures, the hours continue to shrink. For years, the cafeteria was closed from 4:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. so that staff could prepare for dinner. Myself and other bloggers have never criticized that. We've barely even criticized the fact that staff recently extended this closure time from 4-5:00 p.m. Then they decided they would close at 3:55 p.m. and now the cafeteria is regularly closed at 3:50.
My criticisms of Carnegie kitchen staff in the past have largely been for closing the kitchen occasionally in mid-afternoon during welfare cheque-issue week. Staff used to treat welfare week as a slack-off week. Since the media exposure, this practice on the part of kitchen staff has stopped.
The evening cafeteria hours have also shrunk over the past couple of years. The cafeteria used to close at 8:30, then 8:00 p.m., but twice on cold evenings last week, people went into the cafeteria at 7:45 to buy food and were told that the soups and other hot food had been put away. All that was left to buy was breakfast cereal and pastries.