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 You And Your Union
Regardless of whether you’re new to the union or you’re a long-time member, this course will help you find out what the union is all about. The theme for this one-day course is: What You Should Know About Your Union. Members will have an opportunity to learn more about the Steelworkers. The course looks at the structure of the union, why we pay dues and what services the United Steelworkers provides. The participants will meet the people who work on their behalf. There will be discussion about the different union committees, and how to get involved.
The course provides a comfortable atmosphere so that each person can walk away with a better understanding of the union.
Steelworker Stewards In Action
This new course replaces the old Steward I and II and is available in two compressed versions (9 hours and 15 hours) as well as a four-day version. This course is designed for new and experienced stewards. It will help participants better understand the role stewards play in not only grievance handling, but also in building solidarity in the unit, local and the community.
The course covers:
- Structure of the Union
- Responsibilities of the steward
- Where the steward fits
- Grievance writing and handling
- Investigating grievances
- Communicating in the union and with management
- Mobilizing in the workplace
- Taking action beyond the workplace
Arbitration: To Go Or Not To Go
Sessions will focus on:
- Analyzing grievances
- Time limits and extensions
- Introduction to Labour Arbitration Cases (If your local has a copy of Brown and Beatty, please bring it with you; it will assist you in this course.)
PREREQUISITE: Participants must have completed the Steelworker Stewards in Action course.
Arbitration: We’re Going, What Now
TThis course is designed for Chief Stewards and Grievance Committee persons who will be preparing the presentation of arbitration cases.
Sessions will focus on:
- Facts vs. Evidence - legal argument
- Gathering information and evidence
- Selecting and preparing witnesses
- Researching jurisprudence
- What to expect at the arbitration hearing
- Procedure - preliminary issues; evidentiary issues
- Collective agreement interpretation
- Settlement discussions / settlement agreements
- Duty of Fair Representation/Duty to Accommodate
PREREQUISITE: Participants must have completed Arbitration: To Go or Not To Go
Arbitration: Prepare And Present
This course is designed to give participants who have previously completed Arbitration I and II, the practical skills required to prepare and present a case at an Arbitration hearing. Special emphasis is placed on evidence, techniques in examination and cross-examination, the opening statement and final arguments, as well as current trends and emerging issues at arbitration.
NOTE: This intensive course is instructed by the National Office Legal department and is limited to 12 students per class.
PREREQUISITE: All students must prove their completion of Arbitration: To Go Or Not To Go and Arbitration: We’re Going, What Now
Bargaining To Win
This course will assist members who serve on Bargaining Committees to understand the Collective Bargaining process. This course will prepare participants to work as part of the negotiating team. Participants will be better prepared for events in getting both themselves and the membership “ready and engaged” in the bargaining process. It will ensure participants are aware of the challenges they will face both within and outside of the committee while carrying out their responsibilities. Communication with the membership will be a key part of this training.
Sessions will include:
- Determining issues
- Communicating with the membership
- Negotiating skills
- Contract language
- How to cost a package
Bargaining Pensions
This course is designed for bargaining or pension committees.
Sessions will focus on:
- How pensions work
- Assessing pension plans
- Pension plan finances
- Pension Benefits Legislation and Canada Pension Plan (CPP)
NOTE: Participants should bring a calculator, along with a copy of your collective agreement, pension plan, and actuarial report of pension plan. (Your Staff Representative can help you get these documents.)
Confronting Workplace Change: Continuous Bargaining Strategies
Today’s workplace is in constant change and these changes are impacting negatively on our members and our union power. Changes in technology, new management policies, changes in work organization and work processes are only some of the constant workplace changes that our activists have to deal with on a daily basis.
This course will help participants analyze the strengths and challenges of traditional models of collective bargaining and contract enforcement in an environment of on-going workplace change, develop a strategic plan to apply a continuous bargaining approach, and analyze the changes that will be needed within the union to accommodate a continuous bargaining approach.
This course is intended for all activists, executive members, committee members, health and safety committee members and any members that are already involved in work teams.
Health and Safety Training
Please consult the Education section of your District website for information about Health and Safety training available in your area. For more information, please contact your District Education Coordinator or Staff Representative.
Workers’ Compensation
Please consult the Education section of your District website for information about Workers’ Compensation training available in your area. For more information, please contact your District Education Coordinator or Staff Representative.
Health and Safety – Stress Awareness
This course equips workers with the skills to identify:
- Workplace stressors
- How stressors affect workers’ minds and bodies
- Strategies to resolve or reduce stress
- Tactics for a healthier workplace
Leadership for Action
Effective leadership for our locals/units is essential for our union to continue to achieve our goals. Today’s union leader must be able to inform and involve our members and our communities. They must be able to give our members a sense of their own power by building resistance.
This course will:
- Help participants develop personal leadership skills
- Help participants assess personal strengths and challenges as leaders
- Improve communications with our membership
- Build leadership and activism inside and outside of the workplace
- Help participants understand how campaigns build involvement
- Apply strategic planning and problem solving to our locals/units
- Develop ways to support and sustain leadership in the locals/units
Local Union Officers / Chairpersons Training
This course is designed for all current and potential Local and Amalgamated Local executive officers and unit chairpersons, and will focus on:
- Union, local and unit structure
- Committees and responsibilities
- Duties and roles of officers
- Parliamentary procedure
- Consensus building
- Building solidarity and activism
Financial Officers
This is a workshop for local financial officers, trustees and other members interested in the financial operations of the union. Participants will practise the skills they need as a financial officer. This includes keeping a monthly ledger, allocating funds, cheque-writing and the proper notations on the cheque stub, per capita tax reporting, and the actual auditing of the books.
Trustees will gain an understanding of what a complete set of books should look like by actually doing the books themselves. They’ll look at how to budget in a way that helps their local achieve its objectives that serve the needs of the membership.
Session will include:
- Duties of the financial officers
- Financial officers guidance information
- Completing expense vouchers
- Financial secretaries cash book
- Calculate income tax, CPP/QPP and EI
Building Strong Locals: Time To Fight Back
Winning gains at the bargaining table and maintaining the support of union members in the workplace can be tough when facing new anti-union management tactics and anti-worker government policies. This course equips activists with skills to develop strategies to organize and strengthen the union.
This course will help you to:
- Develop strategies to build bargaining strength
- Refine skills to create effective committees’
- Identify community partners and political allies
- Develop goals and tactics to generate support and awareness within our workplaces
- Explore and analyze strategies to get people more involved to build union solidarity
Human Rights Are Workers’ Rights
All union activists by definition are human rights activists. When we combat racism or sexism, accommodate an injured worker or speak out against homophobia, we are helping to build understanding and respect in the union, and helping to build the solidarity we need to take on the struggles in the workplace, at the bargaining table and in our legislatures.
Through this course, activists should be able to engage in the following areas:
- Action plan: map out and implement a human rights action plan for their own locals on return to work
- Collective bargaining: write human rights proposals, develop a human rights checklist and strategies for collective action
- Committees: apply specific leadership skills to create, maintain and participate in their local human rights committee
- Law and policies: use human rights law and union policies to prevent and deal with harassment and discrimination in their workplace and their local
- Global solidarity: understand the implications of globalization and respond to it by connecting their local to social and political alliances with local and global partners
Building Respectful Workplaces: Joint Workplace Committee Course
This course is designed to give joint workplace committees the skills to deal informally and effectively with complaints and conflicts, particularly those of harassment and discrimination. Through this course, participants should be able to effectively intervene in complaints and conflicts in the workplace
Materials will cover:
- A survey of conflict and its sources, particularly discrimination and harassment issues for joint committees
- The role of joint committees in a unionized workplace
- Identification and development of interview skills, protocols and guidelines
- Simple and effective assessment and resolution tools
- Relevant legislation and policies dealing specifically with discrimination and harassment
NOTE: This joint course is negotiated with employers. For more information, please contact your Staff Representative or your District Education Coordinator.
Preventing and Dealing with Harassment in the Workplace
Over 40,000 workers and front line managers have participated in the USW workplace sessions.
This session will help participants:
- Define harassment;
- Understand the effects of harassment on the company and the union;
- Understand union and company policies;
- Understand relevant laws, particularly the prohibited grounds of discrimination and harassment.
NOTE: This course is negotiated with employers. For more information, please contact your Staff Representative or your District Education Coordinator.
Women of Steel Leadership Development
This course is for women interested in getting more active in the union. Sessions will include:
- Communication skills
- Assertiveness and confidence-building techniques
- Understanding how the union works
- Leadership and public speaking skills
- Strategic planning
Women’s Committees: Building Local Union Power
This course is designed to prepare women to start or strengthen local and regional women’s committees. The course includes:
- Defining the role and mandate of women’s committees
- How to involve women and build solidarity in the workplace
- Discussion of challenges facing women inside and outside of the workplace
- Action planning
Steel Lit: Making Things Clear
- It’s about communication.
- It’s about participation.
- It’s about building the union.
- It’s about worker’s power.
The bulletin board is full of information but the members do not read it. Members come to union meetings but they do not participate. We put out bulletins but do not get feedback. We invite members to write their stories but nobody does. Activists always ask themselves, why aren’t they reading it? Why aren’t they speaking their minds?
This course is about knowing whether members can read, write, speak and communicate. In this course you will achieve an understanding of the limitations that some members have to be active in the union. You will also explore tools to improve participation and build the union.
Organizing
Successful union strategies for organizing the unorganized in all fields of industry.
Participants will learn to become successful Organizers for the United Steelworkers.
Globalization and International Solidarity
This course will look at globalization and how trade unions and community organizations are responding to it, in Canada and around the world. This course will also focus on the Steelworkers Humanity Fund as a tool for members to become active on global questions.
Topics include:
- Corporate strategies for globalization
- Ways to strengthen trade unions globally
- IMF, World Bank and the free trade agenda
- One-way versus two-way solidarity
- Why, how and where the Humanity Fund works
Leadership Training for Building Community/Global Alliances
In today’s world of corporate globalization, it has become more important than ever for unions to develop and strengthen local and global links. Through this course, we will carry out pilot projects for a leadership training program, which will strengthen our activist base of members able to operate at global, national and local levels.
Topics of discussion include:
- Corporate globalization: who’s got the power?
- Corporate and labour’s agendas
- A world of two super-powers
- Labour/community links
- Humanity Fund as a tool to build global and local partnerships
This course if offered in two segments (one three-day and one two-day) with four to six weeks in between. After the first segment, the participants will return to their locals and/or area councils with specific planned activities to carry out at the local level designed to engage fellow members.
Take the Next Step: Changing the Face of Politics
In this hands-on workshop you will learn all the basics to help you “talk politics” in the workplace, and develop the skills you need to encourage people to join the New Democratic Party (NDP).
Politics and politicians have an enormous impact on our lives everyday. When we talk about what’s happening in the news or how a government decision has affected us, we’re talking politics.
Learn how to:
- Talk politics in the workplace
- Lead people to talk about how they can get politically active
- Find ways we can work together to make things better for workers and their families
- Plan an NDP membership drive in your workplace or local
Together we can ensure their is a progressive voice in politics and build a stronger political party by encouraging our co-workers to join the NDP. The more NDP members we have in our union, the stronger our Party will be, and the stronger the relationship between the Party and working people and their union. Take the Next Step and win!
Women of Steel VOTE!
This practical workshop is designed to raise awareness about the importance of politics in women’s lives, and to identify ways Women of Steel can get involved and take political action.
This course will help participants:
- Gain a better understanding of Canadian political issues
- Understand why the union supports the New Democratic Party
- Develop the skills and confidence to “talk politics”
- Identify ways women can get politically active
- Develop a “Women of Steel VOTE!” Action Plan using a communications network
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EDUCATION
