SEIU-West's Education Committee selected members to attend the SFL/CLC Spring School 2025 in Moose Jaw. Attendees wrote reports to share what they got out of the training. Have a read!
Shawky:
My name is Shawky El-Mougy, a Biomedical Engineering Technologist at Royal University Hospital. I attended the “Collective Bargaining, Level I” course on May 25th to 29th in Moose Jaw, SK.
Before I attend, I had no knowledge about the process of the bargaining and many of my colleagues asked me about the delay in reaching an agreement with the employer. I found this course to be a great opportunity to have an understanding about the bargaining process and to transfer this knowledge to my colleagues.
The course is well organized and as soon as we, the participants, arrived, the organizers registered us, handed us the schedule and facilitated the check-in. It was a warm welcome from everyone and they even arranged for dinner on that day.
We started immediately on the second day, during breakfast we listen to the Land Acknowledgement seminar. Then we started the first class. It was an overwhelming feeling since I did not know anything about bargaining, but the instructors were very helpful and helped us to overcome that feeling. We were handed the course manual and the instructors introduced the course outline and the course objective. I noticed in my class that the participants are from different unions with different backgrounds. Some are new to the topic, like me, and some were already in the bargaining committee for their unions. The instructors did a great job helping us throughout the course to almost at the same level by intensive participation in the course activities such as: preparing for bargaining, negotiation priorities and acting in the bargaining process as two groups, one representing the employer and one representing the union. We even learned about the contract language and how to differentiate between vague and specific contract languages. The tools of members’ engagement such as meetings, surveys and voting are also discussed in this course. There is much knowledge that I have learned from this course that's hard to be covered in a short report. It was an amazing experience.
The meals were great and we even had entertainment after the course hours such as the mineral swimming pool and a bingo-like game called Singo that was presented one day before the end of the course. We even acted a script called “union feud” that imitated the “Family Feud” TV show. Our class divided into two groups of contestants, one representing the employer/management and the other representing the Union bargaining committee. It was fun and everyone participated.
I have gained friendships with other union members, and we exchanged talks about our unions and our roles as members and union representatives among our union members. We talked a lot about how to engage our members in union activities and how to make our members more interested in participating in union meetings and voting on crucial issues.
My last impression about this course is that it was a great course that taught me how hard and tiring the work of the bargaining committee is and it gave me good knowledge to transfer to my colleagues when they talk about the slow progress in reaching a collective agreement.
Thanks a lot for giving me this opportunity to learn and to express my thoughts about this course.
Kim:
I just wanted to take a moment to thank the Education Committee and SEIU-West for the opportunity to attend the CLC/ SFL Spring School in Moose Jaw from May 25-29. It was a good opportunity to connect with other people from other unions as well as gain some new knowledge.
The class I attended was Reconciliation in Action. This course was facilitated by Dodie Ferguson and Ron Rousseau. The experience and knowledge pasted on by these two facilitators was well presented and the exercises brought things into a new light and perspective. Also having the course done in a circle rather than a typical classroom setting allowed for each of us in the class to build respect and trust, which gave us the freedom to share freely without criticism.
The history of the colonization of Indigenous People was horrific. Decolonization requires Canadian people to recognize and accept the reality of Canada’s colonial history. By gaining a better understanding of Indigenous peoples and building new relationships, we will not only help to put into action the government, but also individually, we will become allies of Indigenous peoples. The willingness to follow through in our own lives will then cause the ripple effect to impact those not only in our homes and communities but also in our workplaces.
Thank you once again for the opportunity.