August 15, 2018 - The District 6 Fall School will be held on November 4-9, 2018 at Fern Resort, Orillia, Ontario. USW Local 1944 will be selecting up to three rank and file members to attend the D6 Fall School. In addition, District 6 has awarded our Local with one scholarship to support a member's participation.
Available courses:
Co-investigations: Principles and Application for Joint Investigations
This course is ideal for union members who sit on joint committees related to human rights, and workplace harassment, sexual harassment and violence. Joint committees are sometimes asked to co-investigate complaints. The course covers key topics such as effective collaboration with a co-investigator, ensuring neutrality in an investigation, understanding the co-investigation process, effective methods of interviewing parties to the complaint, collecting and analyzing evidence, writing investigation reports, and ensuring the legitimacy of findings.
Unionism on Turtle Island
"Turtle Island" is an Indigenous name for North America. This course will deepen your understanding of our shared history as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. We will look at the connections between Indigenous struggles and labour struggles, including USW's experience with bargaining and representing Indigenous members. In an open, respectful forum, participants will be encouraged to ask questions about current issues, cultural practices, or other matters so that they will feel more knowledgeable about Canada's peoples, history, and present-day reality. By the end of the course, you will be better equipped to be a good ally on Indigenous issues and to practice reconciliation inside our union and in your community.
Political Action
Most of our workplace issues have a political component. Our health and safety rules, how we bargain, whether employers can use scabs and most work-related issues are affected by the laws and regulations politicians and political parties adopt. Being political is necessary to union activism. This course will expose you to an overview of the Canadian political system and introduce you to the basics of political campaigning. Examining union involvement both during and between elections, we will give a hands-on introduction to lobbying, mobilizing and communicating and detailed training in the components of election campaigns. Prepare to learn the skills of communicating, strategizing, targeting and recruiting for political and issue campaigns as well as gain back-room insights into the political machine. This course is designed for both those politically active and those simply politically interested.
Bargaining in a Borderless World
Steelworkers are dealing day-in and day-out with the destructive consequences of globalization. From forestry and mining, to manufacturing and telecommunications, our members are negotiating with massive multinationals for which Canadian workplaces are but a small part of their global operations. We are often confronted by job losses due to unfair trade agreements, environmental degradation from reckless resource extraction and the weakening of laws and regulations intended to protect workers and communities. Meanwhile, new workers arriving in Canada hoping to build a better life often face exploitation, such as widespread abuses of the wage-suppressing Temporary Foreign Worker Program. This course will look at the tactics and tools used by employers and governments to spread and sustain this model of globalization, the response from unions in collective bargaining and politics, as well as alternatives for a model of development rooted in global justice.
If you are interested in participating in one of the above courses at District 6 Fall School, please submit an application for consideration. The deadline to apply is Thursday, September 13, 2018 at 4:30 pm Pacific Time.
Please note that only members from District 6 will be selected to participate.
In Solidarity,
USW Local 1944
