Join your fellow Steelworkers for a week of learning and engagement to strengthen our union!

Register early to ensure a spot in your preferred course during our week-long educational seminars at the Living Water Resort from May 11-16, 2025 at Living Water Resorts, in Collingwood, Ontario. Class size is limited. Please reach out to your local union leadership for approval before you register.

Registration and application deadline is April 9th, 2025.

Courses Offered:

Stewards in Action III: Grievances at Final Step and Beyond

This course helps build skills in defining issues to research, in how to actually do research on line, and in how to find and read relevant arbitration decisions to apply their legal principles to a current grievance file. Participants need to be prepared to do a considerable amount of research on a laptop in order to complete the course.

The course provides a framework for making sound decisions about advancing a grievance to arbitration or for choosing another path. These skills and tools are certainly useful when the grievance procedure (pre-arbitration) is exhausted, at the point where the steward or grievance committee or Local Union needs to decide “to go or not to go”. The skills can also be used earlier in the grievance procedure in order to weigh the merits of a case and, where possible, present stronger arguments to the employer in support of the union’s position.

Participants should bring a laptop to class if at all possible.

This course is best suited to experienced stewards and grievance committee members.

PREREQUISITE: Participants must have completed Stewards in Action I & II

Bargaining To Win:

This course is recommended to be taken 4-6 months before you begin bargaining.

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

Promoting Mental Health in the Workplace:

This course examines mental health as a crucial issue both in our workplaces and in our roles as members and activists in the union. At the end of the course, participants will be able to:

  • Identify negative attitudes towards mental health and the implications of stigma, both in the workplace and in the union
  • Learn, understand and apply a legal framework related to mental disability
  • Learn about the employer’s duty to accommodate and how to create an accommodation plan for mental disability
  • Assess risk factors in the workplace using an adaptation of the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace
  • Determine the difference between mental health and mental illness
  • Assess your own level of mental health and make a personal plan to maintain and improve mental health
  • Consider the balance between mental health and union activism
  • Draft a model Letter of Agreement related to mental health in the workplace

This workshop is important to all members concerned about mental health, and particularly activists who serve on joint health and safety committees and human rights committees.

Register Here: https://form.123formbuilder.com/6810328/2025-usw-district-6-spring-school

APPLICATION FORM: Arbitration: Prepare and Present.

This is an application-based course. Once upon receiving your submission, you will receive an email notification confirming whether your application has been approved.

Arbitration – Prepare and Present:

This intensive course, instructed by the USW National Office Legal Department, is designed to give participants the practical skills and knowledge required to prepare and present a case at an arbitration hearing.

Special emphasis is placed on collecting evidence, effective techniques in examination and cross-examination, developing opening statements and final arguments, as well as discussion of current trends and emerging issues in arbitrations.

Prerequisite: Participants must have completed Stewards in Action I, II & III

To Apply: https://form.123formbuilder.com/6811684/2025-usw-district-6-spring-school-application-form-arbitration

Registration – scroll down to access the registration form!

Registration fee:
Single occupancy: $2,200
Double occupancy: $1,900
Note: Double occupancy is limited and it is on a first-come, first-served basis. Not everyone who chooses double occupancy will receive it.

Register online and send the registration fee to:
USW District 6 Spring School
Attn: Dani Mahmoudi
800-234 Eglinton Avenue East
Toronto, ON M4P 1K7

Please make cheque or money order payable to the United Steelworkers (memo line: USW District 6 Spring School)

District 6 has scholarships available on a first-come, first served basis, with one scholarship per bargaining unit. Participants from Atlantic provinces will be eligible for an enhanced scholarship due to travel costs.