7th Annual Joint Leadership Meeting

2008 Joint Leadership Meeting Report September 16th, Courtyard Marriott

September 24, 2008

Close to seventy leaders in our union gathered at this year’s 7th Annual OPSEU Joint Leadership Meeting. All Equity Chairs, the entire Executive Board, leaders from a variety of sectors and divisions, as well as senior staff kicked off the first phase of social mapping planning in our union. Karl Flecker, National Director of the Anti-Racism and Human Rights Department at the Canadian Labour Congress, facilitated the meeting.

The theme of the meeting emerged from a 2008 Convention resolution. It called on OPSEU to complete a social map and survey of the membership. It also called on OPSEU to implement a plan that reflects a more representative workforce. Full of a variety of activities aimed at creating a foundation for advancing our work, the meeting was a rousing start to OPSEU’s innovative social mapping project.

After a warm welcome from Patty Rout, 1st VP/Treasurer, Equity Chairs presented some compelling statistics about our membership. For instance, well over half of our members are set to retire over the next ten years. Also, the majority of our members are women; a number which is on the rise. These demographic realities make it clear that, in order to sustain the union’s membership base, we need to gain a better understanding of both our current and future membership.

But what does social mapping really mean? This was the question answered in our next activity. Some of the common themes were: (see inset box, right)

Karl then examined how changing demographics are and will continue to create opportunities for the labour movement. Rising birthrates in the aboriginal population, total reliance on immigration as the net source of labour in six years, the aging workforce being replaced by much younger workers will change the face of the new workforce. It will be a workforce largely comprised of three groups: Aboriginals; immigrants and newcomers; and young Canadians. Given this reality, Karl suggested that an effective social mapping project will have to answer four critical questions (see inset box, below):

With these questions in mind, the Chairs reviewed how other unions have approached social mapping. We learned that, not only are other unions already doing this work, unions have achieved the most effective results where their work was comprehensive in scope at the outset, employed a long-term vision and where they created regular mechanisms to monitor their progress.

To underscore the political and practical importance of this project, Smokey Thomas, President, addressed the leadership. Smokey stressed that this project represents an opportunity for OPSEU to begin strategically planning around the needs of our future membership.

Leaders then watched a short video interview of David Foot. Foot is an outspoken demographics expert who contends that change cannot be avoided, but can be anticipated and managed. His work focuses on harnessing demographic data for the purposes of effective and sustainable organizational development.

Identifying next steps was the focus of the remainder of the meeting. Leaders were asked to record their ideas about concrete actions, necessary resources and timelines. To the left is an outline of the common themes.

n the end, the day was a success. We strengthened our understanding of the importance and nature of social mapping and created a foundation on which to move the project ahead. A full proposal to the Board will be presented at the upcoming October Executive Board Meeting.