Structure and organization
The Equity Subcommittee will consist of the Association’s President and at least three (3) other members of the NEC. A Chair will be elected from the NEC members of the subcommittee on an annual basis, and a Vice-Chair may also be elected if desired. Membership will be open to all CAPE members in good standing. Committee members will vote on proposals for caucuses and other activities by simple majority.
Context and Objective
CAPE’s constitutional obligation is to promote and protect the interests of all of its members in relation to their employment, and CAPE members from equity-seeking groups are confronted with many additional barriers in their workplace and from their employer. As a result, many face elevated and disproportionate rates of discrimination, harassment, mental health struggle, and hardship that are objective and measurable. For many CAPE members, systemic inequity and discrimination structure or influence all aspects of their experience of the workplace, as it does their experience of societal structures at large.
While legal and legislative requirements increasingly commit employers in general and the federal government in particular to addressing equity crises and taking strides toward correcting them, accountability to existing commitments and to workers who are part of equity-seeking groups is lacking. As a result, equity as a priority area is treated in a performative and symbolic way, or is revealed to be contingent and easily subordinated to shifting institutional priorities. While consultation with equity-seeking groups is sometimes recognized as necessary and institutionalized through employee networks, this model of consultation does not go far enough in enabling diverse members to exercise power and impose accountability in the defense and promotion of their collective interests. Collective, organized power is necessary to ensure substantive and lasting gains for diverse members that are not contingent on employer goodwill.
Systemic changes are required to meaningfully address deeply embedded and intersecting structural expressions of white supremacy, settler-colonialism, ableism, heteropatriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Unions have a key role to play in advancing these changes, as has been demonstrated across history. They can do this through an approach that is:
- Led by the workers who are impacted by these systems;
- Based on strategic exercises of collective and union power in relation to the employer;
- Reflective of an understanding that the workplace does not exist in isolation from broader societal structures, trends, and movements.
CAPE’s Equity Subcommittee will forward this approach by:
- Facilitating the formation and organization of equity caucuses that advance diverse members’ interests in relation to the employer;
- Ensuring that equity caucus priorities are strategically integrated in the work and priorities of the National Executive Committee, including bargaining.
The Equity Subcommittee will have secondary functions of:
- Overseeing and advising on internal and organizational initiatives to advance equity within CAPE;
- Developing approaches to further institutionalizing equity caucuses as a core and standing structure of CAPE, including through policy and constitutional change.
Mandate
- The Equity Subcommittee is responsible for facilitating the formation and organization of CAPE equity caucuses, and for representing their strategic priorities at each meeting of the NEC (as a standing agenda item for each caucus).
- Proposals for new equity caucuses will be submitted to the Equity Subcommittee for review and, where necessary, for support in development of a strategic approach and workplan. Once a strategy and workplan have been established, the proposals will be presented to and approved at the following NEC meeting.
- Equity caucuses will be composed only of members who are not presently sitting on the Equity Subcommittee.
- The Equity Subcommittee will support equity caucuses in their organizing, including through: promotion, infrastructure, strategy sessions, supporting or sharing analyses and mappings, and identifying linkages and offering strategic coordination of workplans across caucuses and in relation to other CAPE initiatives and campaigns.
In addition:
- The Equity Subcommittee will be consulted by CAPE staff in the development and implementation of internal equity initiatives, and ensure transparency and accountability of these initiatives to the equity caucuses.
The Equity Subcommittee will develop a plan for further institutionalizing the role of the equity caucuses at CAPE, including through recommendations for constitutional change.
