Our History
Since the inception of the Portland Hotel Society in 1991, workers at PHS have been CUPE members. When PHS began and its workers left the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA) to establish PHS, they did so under the umbrella of CUPE 1004, the Vancouver Civic Employees’ Union.
As PHS continued to expand and transform, it eventually rebranded as PHS Community Services Society. Similarly, the members of PHS within CUPE 1004 made a significant decision in 2023, and voted to establish their own independent union, CUPE 5536. With an eye on the future, they adopted the name BC Harm Reduction Workers to underscore the foundational principle of harm reduction that underpins all their work, and to include their members in the Lower Mainland as well as on Vancouver Island.
CUPE 5536 members are covered by three separate, provincial health care sector collective agreements, and are members of their associated bargaining associations: The Community Subsector Association of Bargaining Agents, The Nurses’ Bargaining Association, and The Health Science Professionals’ Bargaining Association. CUPE 5536 defends these collective agreements to ensure our members’ rights are upheld.
Within the broader labour movement, we advocate for the issues that are important to CUPE 5536 members and the communities they serve. We are committed to promoting economic and social justice for all workers everywhere. All that we do is based on CUPE’s fundamental values of solidarity, equality, democracy, integrity, and respect.
“These thousand crosses speak to us resoundingly,
collectively,
to warn us that to abandon
the wretched,
the miserable,
the scorned,
the scapegoated,
makes a legitimate place for abandonment in our society,
and this abandonment will go right up the social ladder
but to truly care for lives at the bottom
will make a place for care
and this caring will ensure that no one be abandoned”
– Bud Osborn 1998, “Oppenheimer Park”