Financial Update
Good day CUPE 4070 Members,
It has been my utmost pleasure to serve as your Secretary-Treasurer over the past two years. In anticipation of the Secretary-Treasurer’s report at the upcoming General Membership Meeting (GMM) on November 8th, I wanted to share some financial highlights from the past year and ideally entice as many of you as possible to attend the GMM, where you can share feedback, seek clarification and enhance your knowledge about the financial affairs of this local.
You will find attached to this letter, links to a) our financial performance over the past year compared against the budgets you have approved, b) trustee recommendations and c) Secretary-Treasurer’s response to said recommendations.
Overall, I am pleased to share that we have successfully delivered results well below the budgeted amounts in almost all tracked categories. The exception to that is the Operating Expenses, where we had to pay for additional taxes, unknown to us during the budget presentation last year. Our other category revenues significantly exceed our expenses, and the overall surplus will be reverted back to replenish the defense fund as well as into savings of the general fund. As some of you would recall, you had authorized the defense fund at the past meetings.
Our trustee team has worked extremely hard to go over every single transaction and signature, on which they base their recommendations for improvements. I am also happy to report that a very significant number of the recommendations has been implemented and adopted to ensure that your money remains safe.
At the GMM, this Wednesday, the trustee team will discuss their new recommendations and findings derived from the most recent audit, however I am happy to share some of the completed procedures from the past audits.
We have:
developed processes for handover of property from outgoing to incoming executives;
digitized all paperwork to ensure its completeness so not a single signature of authorizations is missing before disbursement is authorized;
moved over to conducting audits virtually to save on hotels, flights and all the costs associated with travel;
obtained commercial insurance for all our offices to comply with the lease requirements;
moved our executive top-up structure to post-payment, rather than a prepayment, to ensure no funds go unaccounted should an executive vacancy arise;
developed an executive cost report to ensure that each member of the executive team is aware of how much each of their roles costs to the membership, in order to encourage attention for opportunities to save anywhere possible
In addition to the accomplished trustee recommendations, we have also secured top legal representation for the upcoming merger. Being a rarity in Canada, Michael Church brings decades of experience in union mergers in transportation/aviation sectors.
We have aligned the budget year with our fiscal year, which allows us to produce the report that is linked here. This endeavor now allows us a smoother allocation of expected expenses with potentially more left available for committee budgets.
We also started recognizing time bank as revenue for ease of understanding how it affects the bottom line (see Time Bank Revenue category on the linked Income Statement).
A couple weeks ago, at the CUPE National Convention, your executive team pushed to increase the strike pay from the current $300 per week. This amount is unsustainable in the current economic landscape (see CUPE4070 Instagram Account).
And we have been able to complete an audit for the past year, as mentioned earlier. For context, some of our sibling locals in Airline Division are only on track to complete audits from 2016, which speaks to competence, consistency, and dedication of our Trustee team.
Despite all the gains and successes, we continue to face risks to financial and overall affairs of the local due to delayed approval of the bylaws. Last fall, we have obtained a preapproval from the CUPE National President’s Office of the bylaws proposed to the membership. After your tireless work at the three SMM’s last fall, we still have not had the bylaws returned to us with any feedback. As we expected the approval process to conclude around March 2023, our budgets are built around what the membership has approved in these bylaws. Almost a year later, we don’t have any concrete certainty of whether these bylaws will be accepted and approved by CUPE National. This has a significant bearing on our bottom line as it affects the safety net coverage of uninterrupted operation should any of the offices fall vacant due to illnesses or resignations, amongst numerous other factors.
Some of you have had concerns of how current economic climate and persistent inflation affects our financial standing. Overall, we are insulated from the effects of inflation as our revenues and bulk of our expenses are tied to our wages in the form of dues we receive and flight release costs we pay to our employer. There are no unanticipated swings in those factors as we mostly budget our flight release at the top CCM wage in each bargaining unit.
In conclusion, I would stress we are in for some turbulence over next few years. Erosion of our purchasing power due to inflation is roughly equivalent to a 17-19% wage cut when compared to 2019 and that is unacceptable.
This membership’s persistent struggle to survive on the current wages does not go unnoticed. While the upcoming merger will test our unity in the most extreme sense, we must persist in maintaining a collective focus on getting prepared for bargaining as only then do we stand any chance of having a wage increase. We only have one chance before we are locked in another lengthy term and financial preparation for bargaining is essential.
This imminent focus on bargaining is directly tied to the importance of fiscal responsibility. Recently Air Canada Component announced a goal of accumulating $3 million for bargaining in 2025. Our local is very young and not in a position to have nearly as much allocated to CA2 negotiations. Consequently, my personal focus is to adhere to delivering results below budget and aggressively contributing to our savings, as much as the bylaws, membership and the rest of the executive team would permit.
Getting through these upcoming turbulent years requires participation from as many of you as possible. Please continue to get involved, attend the GMM and continue to educate yourself on union affairs.
Sign up for the GMM here.
Alex Grigoriev
Secretary-Treasurer
CUPE Local 4070