Solidarity for Everyone - An HSA Diversity Workshop - Registration now Open
An HSA Diversity Workshop
TIME: 8:30 am to 4:00 pm
LOCATION: HSA Head Office - 180 East Columbia Street, New Westminster, BC
Solidarity Includes Everyone: Transgender people and your union.
This is an awareness-raising day-long workshop on the challenges facing trans workers in communities, workplaces, and unions. We will explore how unions can work to end discrimination and support our trans members.
This introductory talk includes an overview of appropriate words to use, existing legal protections, and what we as union activists can do to make sure our workplaces and our unions are as inclusive as possible to transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming folx.
The course covers:
- Vocabulary- who are trans people and how do we talk about them respectfully? What words to use, words not to use, and invasive questions.
- Barriers trans people face in the workplace and in the world.
- Existing legal protection for trans workers, patients, and clients.
- Videos illustrating some of these barriers in the workplace, and in healthcare and social services settings.
- Human Rights obligations of the union, and in the workplace.
- Equity vs Equality.
- What activists can do to make our workplaces and our unions more inclusive to LGBT folx.
- Pronoun activity (pairs)
- Scenarios (small groups)
Open to all HSA members. Space is limited.
The workshop will be led by the Canadian Labour Congress’s Adrienne Smith, a human rights activist and drug policy lawyer.
They graduated from UBC law school in 2013 and were called to the bar in British Columbia in 2014. Their recent work involves litigation and advocacy on behalf of drug users, prisoners in provincial correctional facilities, and transgender people. In their first two years of law practice, they made arguments about the deleterious effects of mandatory minimum sentences on women, aboriginal offenders and drug users at the Supreme Court of Canada and the BC Court of Appeal. They recently settled a BC Supreme Court case which changed provincial prison policy and secured access to opiate replacement therapy for prisoners in BC jails. Adrienne currently works as a Regional Representative for the Canadian Labour Congress, where they deliver union education; support the work of regional labour councils; and work to win a Pharmacare plan for everyone.
To register for these workshops log into My Events Registration using the prompts provided. Workshops are listed under Other events. Please call the HSA office at 604.517.0994 or 1.800.663.6119 if you do not know your HSA member ID number.