Effective Representation in High-Conflict Situations
9:30 AM - 4:00 PM PST Maritime Labour Centre 111 Victoria Drive Vancouver, BC V5L 4C4
IN PERSON at the Maritime Labour Centre | Lunch will be provided
Shop stewards and union officers support members through all kinds of problems. Sometimes those problems feel intractable. This course will explore strategies for managing conflict with and among members and finding a path to satisfactory resolution. Applying an anti-oppression lens, we will work through your competing obligations – to individual members, to the broader membership, to the union itself – and how to balance them. You will gain understanding of your obligations to members under labour, human rights, and privacy law and how to meet those obligations even in challenging circumstances. The course will also address how to protect the union from liability in particularly difficult, high-conflict situations with members.
Facilitator: Susanna Allevato Quail, Allevato, Quail & Roy
Susanna Allevato Quail is a partner at Allevato, Quail & Roy where she practices labour, human rights, and regulatory law. She has experience representing unions and workers across the public and private sectors in arbitration, labour board, human rights tribunal, and court proceedings. Her pro bono work focuses on migrant worker rights and trans equality, and she has litigated precedent-setting cases in these areas. She brings a strong social-justice lens to her work and draws on her experience as a union activist prior to becoming a lawyer.