By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: October 16, 2018
CUPE 2269, union of the District of Squamish employees, has endorsed Jeff Cooke for Mayor and six other candidates for council.
Besides Jeff Cooke, the union is endorsing Paul Dosanjh, Armand Hurford, Jackie Menezes, Edward Archibald, Jenna Stoner, and Doug Race for council.
There are two other candidates that have received the union’s ‘supplementary’ support: Sacha Fabry and Rajan Hans.
CUPE 2269 president Wendy Shard said over the last few weeks, the union’s political action team interviewed 22 candidates for the upcoming elections.
The goal was to find out the candidates official position regarding their views and to find out which candidates could best support CUPE 2269.
“Each interview was conducted with respect and impartiality and the team was successful in providing the message to each candidate of the importance and value that CUPE 2269 members have to both the Squamish municipality and to the public,” said Wendy Shard, the CUPE 2269 president.
Shard said the final decisions were based on three factors, the candidate’s knowledge and understanding of unions and the importance of their operations, their fundamental empathy towards working staff and the know-how/benefits of achieving good employee engagement, and their leadership values, prowess, and style.