Okay, maybe not my best Vlog, but what a beautiful beach! I’m very excited to be one of 60 people selected from coast to coast in Canada to take part in the CUPW Union Educational Program. It’s a 4 week course, with a week in May, a week in June, a week in September, and a week in October. The first week of the course was an orientation, followed by learning world history, a analysis of inequity, social class, postal history, and more.

I gotta admit, after the first couple days of the course, I was feeling positive but very unsure if I was going to want to spend four weeks this way. We played a lot of games, talked about how the games made us “feel”, which to me seemed very silly. Once we got through the orientation though, the course started getting really interesting, and I also began to realize the benefit of some of the earlier activities. One of the most important things I learned about myself is that I shouldn’t dismiss things as stupid right off the bat because they don’t interest me. Different people learn different way, and the sometimes uncomfortable or silly group activities we had to do really did strengthen us as a group.

Once we got into the actual course material it got really interesting. We looked at how society has functioned in different era’s of history, and how other countries today are doing things differently then how we do things and Canada and the US. We looked at countries like Norway and Venezuela, and ways they build quality social systems still within the capitalist system. We learned about the early leaders of CUPW and of past postal strikes. We learned about things that postal workers fought for, many which are now standard for all workers. It made me proud to be part of a Union with such a strong history. We also took part in a great workshop about learning how to speak to the media, and get your point across when they are trying to lead you the other way.

Outside of classes, we had great fellowship, I’ve made some amazing new friends, we played music, enjoyed various games nights, and often ended the day with a camp fire. We’ve been intermingling a lot with the francophones and that’s inspiring me to get back on track with my Ipod French lessons. At the end of the week we all had to give a 2 minute speech. I talked about the monetary system and  the sham of government being in debt to private banks.. hoping to introduce to some new ideas to people before week 2!

It’s not an easy time to be Union right now, as Globalization has pushed the cost of labor way down, the average workers wage is going way down. Unions get blamed for forcing jobs out of the country and being a burden to the public. I’m excited to work with these people to talk about how we can work together and work towards a fairer society, and better working environments and pay for all workers! Figuring out big solutions for big problems!