Hot Tubbin' For Justice

The Governor General's Canadian Leadership Conference  (GGCLC) rolls around every four years. It's an event where 230 people from across the country from labour, government, business, non-profit and education sectors get together and talk about the future of our country. This year's theme is community sustainability  where delegates will look at issues facing Canadian society from environmental, social, cultural, and economic sustainabilities.  I am genuinely interested in the theme of the conference - At the Learning Centre, I support the work of my colleagues who do community engagement but my role is passive, not active. I have learned so much from each of my colleagues and the various partners that they work with and given the chance, I would have a lot to contribute to this conference.  Everyone meets in Halifax for the opening plenary and then are put into study groups of 16 and as a group, they travel to a different province/territory (it cannot be the provin...

Every January the Canadian Labour Congress holds its Pacific Winter School in Harrison Hot Springs. It's an opportunity for all affiliated unions and labour councils to send delegates to take courses like Collective Bargaining, Arbitration, Provincial Labour Law, Health and Safety, Leadership, Steward Training, Facing Management, Union Counselling to name a few (or a lot, haha). Most courses are very practical and have lots of role plays - everything from mock bargaining sessions to mock hearings at the Labour Relations Board. It's a lot of work in class and then a lot of group work in the evenings.  Last week I took Collective Bargaining Level 1  - the introduction to the Collective Bargaining process. The unions represented in our class were CUPE, BCGEU, UFCW, USW, BCFMWU, IAFIAW and the BCTF. Our instructors were seasoned negotiators and staff reps from the BCGEU and the IBEW. We spent the week talking about the process of collective bargaining and our instructors sha...