Report on my Participation in the CLCs Labour College of Canada – Session 3
The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) is a Canadian labour organization that brings together national and international unions, provincial and territorial federations of labour and community-based labour councils to represent over 3 million workers. The Labour College of Canada (LCC), a 15-month long educational curriculum bringing together Canadian labour leaders, is a program offered by the CLC. The complete program has 3 intensive sessions, with the third and final in-person session for my cohort having taken place from July 19-24, 2026, at the Donald Gordon Hotel and Conference Centre in Kingston, Ontario. The hotel is situated on traditional Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to learn on these lands.
We started the session off by presenting our Independent Learning Projects. My topic was in relation to equity across the labour movement and how we can build new equity-related structures to better support members at PIPSC. This involved researching how other unions support their equity-deserving members to determine how I could modify their programs to fit into PIPSC structures. I also found some studies on equity in unions, whose recommendations and findings fed into my proposals. Some notable topics from other presenters included supporting young workers in the labour movement, how to rebuild after a strike, and ways to support members using a trauma informed approach.
The rest of the week focused on one course: “Growing the Movement Inside and Out”, which was a continuation of the online course that had started in the months prior. The course contained two subjects. The first was “Work and Workers in a Global World”, taught by Carleton University Professor Jane Stinson and CLC Researcher Lisa Freeman. The second subject was “Governance Laws and Policies”, taught by Osgoode Hall Law School Professor Adrian Smith.
In the first half of this course, we learned about geopolitical and economic systems, the remaking of work in this era of neoliberal globalization, and power structures and how they have impacted worker and working class movements’ power. This course dug into the core social, economic, and political processes that shaped work and resistance today, and was taught through a series of reading sets that were each championed by students in the class. These champion reading discussions allowed us to learn how these topics applied to each other’s unions and how they have shaped our experiences in the labour movement.
In the second section of this class, we discussed labour law and direct action in this current legal context. We dug into the inequities that exist in our legal framework and how criminal law is seeping into the labour landscape. A quote that stood out from this section is, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread” (Anatole France, 1894). We discussed how worker power is built from a collective withdrawal of economic power (i.e. a strike). We also dug into the history of post-war labour law and how it led to “responsible unionism”, where strikes and lockouts are prohibited for the life of collective agreements, discontent is managed, and secondary action is limited. This in itself is a form of policing that has led to inequality of bargaining power. We had a discussion on how employers have the ability to ensure that they can eat by manipulating markets and controlling the economy, while workers only have their collective power of withdrawing labour as a means to meet our basic needs. There were talks of where to go from here and how unrestrained unionism may be the key to moving forward in this current context and legal framework.
On our final full day, we came together to celebrate our cohort’s graduation, as this was our last session with the Labour College. During the graduation, several labour leaders from unions representing graduates joined the celebration, which allowed for networking to discuss shared goals.
Overall, session 3 was the perfect way to wrap up the Labour College experience. It offered many opportunities to learn from each other and left me hopeful for the future of the labour movement. As this incredible 15-month journey comes to a close, I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to join this program and am thankful for the many connections and friendships made with leaders from unions across the country. I am proud to be the first PIPSC graduate from this program and hope that there will be many who follow.
Katie Francis