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UNIFOR FANTASY FOOTBALL

To: Local Union Presidents and Recording Secretaries

Greetings,

The incredible tough year continues for our members with restrictions in place curtailing many programs of our union, especially the in-person activities of the Recreation Department.

The virtual ‘Fantasy Hockey Pool’ held during last year’s hockey season was a tremendous success with close to 1,700 of our Unifor members participating, from coast to coast to coast.

The Recreation Department is building on that success with the 1^st Annual Unifor NFL FANTASY FOOTBALL POOL. It is a simple straight forward pool, you don’t have to be an expert to participate, no entry fee for Unifor members and retirees and some great weekly/monthly prizes along with the overall grand prize winners at the end of the season.

The deadline to register is Wednesday, September 8^th and the link for the pool is www.unifor.org/nflpool.

Please share this information with your members, the more the merrier and good luck to all the participants.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at recreation@unifor.org

In solidarity,

Bill Apsey                                                                     John Aman

Chair, National Recreation Committee                        Director, Recreation Department

Are you prepared to vote in the federal election?

All Local 4304 members,

The federal election campaign clock has begun ticking away!  Are you sure you’re prepared to vote?

Canadians have several options available to them to vote in the federal election; Canadians can vote in person but can also vote by mail!  Now is the time to make sure you’re registered to vote to ensure you receive your voter information card from Elections Canada and to ensure your voter registration information is correct, most Canadians opt to have the voter information sent to Elections Canada as an option when they file their income taxes, but many do not.  If you’re not registered to vote you can register at the polling station but you can save yourself a lot of time and hassle by registering ahead of time.

Use the Elections Canada Voter Registration Service to check if you’re registered to vote, to update the address on your voter registration, to register to vote, and to apply to vote by mail (you will be required to upload proof of identity and address).  If you plan to cast your vote by mail you should apply for your special mail-in ballot as soon as possible using the Elections Canada Voter Registration Service.

Below are some handy infographics provided by Elections Canada to help you with preparing to vote in the federal election.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Chair, Union in Politics Committee
Unifor Local 4304

Election Day is Monday, September 20, 2021
Advanced Polls are open each day from Friday, September 10, 2021 to Monday, September 13, 2021

Federal Election Called

To all Local 4304 members,

As you may have already heard in the news the Prime Minister has called a snap federal election.  As Canadians we have the right, and responsibility, to use our vote to choose our nation’s leaders.

This is a particularly short election period; election day is Monday, September 20, 2021 and advance polls will be held at some point prior to that.

Our committee is not going to tell you who to vote for but as the election campaign progresses we will do our best to provide information about all the options available as well as information on how you can exercise you vote with information about advanced polls, etc.

We would ask that when making you choice to also consider how our new federal government can have an impact on our workplace.  While we are not a federally regulated workplace, the federal government can and does provide investments in public transportation that can lead to more employment opportunities for our members and our brothers an sisters in transit across the country.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Chair, Union in Politics Committee
Unifor Local 4304

Executive Run-Off Results

2021 Executive Board Run-Off Election

To all Local 4304 members,

The results of the 2021 executive election are in from the election committee!

For President

Brendan Burke – 89 offline, 194 online      72%

Lisa Main – 53 offline, 59 online                 28%

spoiled – 2

Brendan Burke is elected with 72% of the votes cast

For Vice-President

Dwayne Hyde – 74 offline, 129 online         52%

Donna Keeping – 66 offline, 119 online      48%

spoiled – 9

Dwayne Hyde is elected with 52% of the votes cast

Election Chair,

Crystal Switzer

New Website Accounts – Update

To all Local 4304 members,

First of all, I would like to thank all members for their patience as the new website accounts have been rolled out.  The process has been a monumental undertaking and has taken MUCH longer than I had anticipated, but the actual process has gone fairly smoothly otherwise.  I must also give a special thanks to Crystal Switzer, Cheryl Rooymans, and Jason Herman from the new Election Committee for contacting hundreds of members this week to get and verify email addresses so we can get every single member registered on the union website once and for all.  I must also give thanks to my wife, Carol, for helping me with entering data for several hundred members on the website and for sending the mailing list confirmation emails which saved many hours of time.

With the exception of six members, everyone who has provided an email address should have now had their new union website account information sent to them.  The remaining six members who provided an email address will need to have their email address reverified since there’s likely a typo somewhere that needs to be corrected.  All remaining members who have not provided an email address will have union website account information sent to their Regional email address (for Local 4304 members at Grand River Transit) over the next 24-48 hours.  Any of those members may contact me at any time to have their regional email address switched to a personal email address if they wish, so if you hear of a member who has not received their account information, it may have been sent to their Regional email address…please have them contact me as soon as possible at webmaster@unifor4304.org.

I would ask that everyone please make an effort to log in to their new website account at some point BEFORE election day (Wednesday, May 19th) to ensure your access is working and to change the temporary password sent to you to something more suitable for you.  If you want to vote online on election day, waiting until then to sort out any website login issues is NOT a good idea, both the Election Committee and I will be extremely busy that day.

Finally, don’t forget that anyone wishing to receive regular email notifications, such as this one, from the union must click the email confirmation link to joining the union mailing list.  If you hear of anyone who has not received this message, or other union emails, please remind them to click the link in that email confirmation message (it may have been delivered to their spam/junk email folder).

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Webmaster
Unifor Local 4304

We’re Pulling Out The Stops – Let’s ALL Get Online!

To all Local 4304 members,

At this afternoon’s Executive Board Meeting, we discussed the ongoing effort to get as many members as possible onto the union website, not just for the coming election but to ensure every member has an account they can use to access member-only union information as long as they are an active member of Local 4304.  It has been determined that we are going to entirely scrap any necessity for members to register for their own account and simply create an account for every member we can get a valid email address for, this will happen preferably when a member first joins the union.

For all existing members, new accounts will be created using a standardized username format, to do this we need to confirm the email addresses of as many members as possible, preferably all!  An account will be created for every valid email address we receive and a username and temporary ‘randomly generated’ temporary password will be emailed to each of those members.

Next week, on Monday, May 10th and Tuesday, May 11th members of the Election Committee will be reaching out to as many members as possible to ask for a current email address.  It is in your best interest to provide one so we can get your new account set up.  Even if you have previously registered on the website, or have previously had an account created for you by a member of the Executive Board, we will be asking you to confirm your email address to ensure it is current so we can create new accounts with the standardized username format.  When you are contacted please spell out your email address as clearly as possible to avoid any possible typos.

However, you can get ahead of the game, help us save time, and completely avoid any cold call from the Election Committee if you confirm or provide your email address beforehand!  To confirm your email address ahead of time, simply send an email with your name (so I know for sure who is writing) and the email address you want to use for your new union website account to webmaster@unifor4304.org.  You can start doing this immediately!

We are also asking for your assistance in getting the email addresses of other members who are not currently receiving these messages or are not on the Local’s Facebook ‘bulletin board’ or any member you know who may be off on any sort of leave, this message may not reach them otherwise before an attempt is made to contact them next week.  Simply give them a heads-up about being contacted next week, or better yet pass on this message to them so they send in their email address on their own as soon as possible.

Once we have the list of valid emails, new accounts will be activated over the course of the day on Wednesday, May 12th.  This will provide a week to iron out any possible account access issues that crop up before election day on May 19th.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Webmaster
Unifor Local 4304

Website Navigation Menu Display Issues

To all Local 4304 members,

As we approach the Local 4304 General Elections we’re working to ensure all the web-base systems (union website, online voting service, etc.) are working correctly, especially since we are still not certain if GRT management will allow any in-person voting in our workplaces due to the pandemic.  The Simply Voting system and it’s integration with the Unifor Local 4304 Website is working but we have recently discovered a minor issue that is not allowing the main website navigation menu to display correctly on mobile devices, but ONLY if you’re viewing the website in ‘portrait’ mode (if you’re holding your phone vertically).

While I work to try and correct this issue (success is not guaranteed), and get the menu to display correctly on mobile devices, a VERY easy workaround is available to everyone by simply turning your mobile device 90 degrees/sideways to ‘landscape’ mode, this should automatically switch the website display on your device to the same as you see on any desktop computer with the full navigation menu visible.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Webmaster
Unifor Local 4304

Union Website Login Issues

To all Local 4304 members,

It has come to my attention that there have been some login issues this week affecting most (or all) registered members.  While investigating this I discovered that the issue also affected the Webmaster account access (although I have an alternative login method available to access the website).  The issue affecting logins has now been resolved and all members should be able to access the members area once again.  If you have any further issues logging in please let me know at webmaster@unifor4304.org.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Webmaster
Unifor Local 4304

GRT 2020 Collective Agreement Changes Now Online

To all Local 4304 members at Grand River Transit,

By popular request the changes to the GRT Collective Agreement since the 2020 strike and ratification vote have been posted in the GRT members are of the Unifor Local 4304 website.  This is the same document that was distributed during the final contract ratification meeting/vote at the end of the strike last year.

You can find the contract changes by logging in to your account on the Unifor Local 4304 website and navigating to the ‘Grand River Transit’ > ‘Collective Agreement’ page.

Unfortunately we still do not yet have a final version of the complete collective agreement either in digital or hard copy format from the Region.  So, to make sense of the agreement take the contract changes document and compare them to the most recent available complete collective agreement that expired at the end of 2019.

Yours in solidarity,

Warren Schnurr
Recording Secretary
Unifor Local 4304

Unifor’s Ontario Area Meetings

Dear members,

I’m excited to share this with you registration is now open for Unifor’s Ontario Area Meetings and we want you there.

The meetings will run from March 22 to April 1. In order to join, you must register in advance.

Find the link to your meeting below.

AREA – DATE – TIME:
Eastern Area – March 22, 2021 – 6:30 p.m.
Kitchener – March 23, 2021 – 6:00 p.m.
GTA – March 24, 2021 – 6:00 p.m.
Northern Ontario – March 30, 2021 – 6:30 p.m.
Windsor – March 31, 2021 – 5:00 p.m.
London – April 1, 2021 – 6:00 p.m.

We had more than 500 members join these meetings when we first went virtual in the fall. I hope to see that number grow in this round. So, please share this invitation with your membership.

Unifor’s Area Directors have organized these meetings and set individual agendas that they know will resonate with workers in your region. I’m looking forward to learning from the experts they have tapped for these exciting events, and to hear some local updates from all of you.

While these meetings are open to all members, you should RSVP today to secure your spot!

If you have any questions regarding registration, please email Jamie.Ayres@unifor.org

In solidarity,

Naureen Rizvi
Ontario Regional Director