The show’s guest in this episode is Jane Mulkewich . She is from Hamilton, Ontario, and has had a varied career leading to her current position as Legal Director of a large union (UFCW Locals 175 & 633) leading a team of lawyers and providing legal services to more than 70,000 workers in workplaces across Ontario. She likes to say she went from the law-makers (as a political staffer) to the law-enforcers (doing high-profile anti-racism work in the Office of the Chief of the Hamilton Police Service) to becoming a lawyer later in life. Other than labor law, she has also practiced family law and criminal law, and continues her life-long interest in community development organizations, serving on boards of directors or being involved as an activist in a myriad of other ways.

—

 

Listen to the podcast here

Experimenting with Collective Agreements with Jane Mulkewich

Hi, I’m Melanie Parish, and I am an executive coach, content creator and author. And I want to welcome you to the Experimental Leader Podcast.

I’m Mel Rutherford. I’m McMaster University’s first transgender department chair, and the chair of psychology, neuroscience and behavior. And I’m happy to be here today.

Well, it’s great to have you. And we’ve been having people comment that we act like we don’t know each other at the beginning of our podcast. So I should say we’re also married and we love each other very much. And, well, you have a really funny expression when I just because…

I can say that. I’m happy to see you today, because you’re in a different country than I am. So I know it’s true.

It’s great to see you, too. And yeah, so what are you thinking about in leadership right now.

So I was I one of the things that I really value in leadership and leading an organization is shared leadership that the that I are, I articulate what roles people have, what leadership roles people have I, you know, hand them their portfolio, I don’t micromanage, I make sure that my department has a lot of leaders, a lot of people doing leadership in a lot of areas. And one of the recent strategies I’ve been employing, in creating more shared leadership is to name the leadership that people are doing. So I’ll give you a couple of examples I had a few days ago, a graduate student came to my office and had some concerns, complaints, suggestions, we talked through what was what was happening and what was needed and what we could change going forward. And then I thanked him for his leadership, because he was in fact providing leadership to the department he was he was representing the graduate students and coming to talk to me. And another example, there were a faculty member came and had a minor conflict with another faculty member. And so I said, Do you mind if I get in touch with that person to get in touch with that person explained the situation, then I invited the two of them to work it out, the two of them went to coffee together, they came up with a solution works for everyone. And after that, I thank them both for their leadership because in fact, they were providing leadership for the department. So in by naming these activities as leadership, which they are, I’m making explicit that we’re all sharing leadership and in the department, those

Are really cool examples. I, I left that, well, I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been thinking about self care a lot. And some of this is because through a set of circumstances, I ended up vacationing a lot in the last two months. So I went on, I was on five different trips in the last two months, which is why I’m never home and why Mel’s happy to see me. And and so a couple of things. One is, like, I’m feeling the best I’ve felt probably in a decade. And some of it might be that my children have grown up and I’m having more time for myself and I’m not on the edge all the time parenting. But I’ve also just had some rest and some fun. And I think that leaders are often super depleted. And and I think that it is I think it’s just a state of being that we get used to and so as I’m feeling really amazing, I also have I went on, on a cruise with a celebrity nutritionist and have committed to a year of better supplementation to really nourish my body and to to really take care of myself deeply through nutrition and exercise. And, and it’s it’s working, I think, I think for the all the years that I was parenting, I would try these things and I wouldn’t feel much of a change. But sort of because I had these opportunities to rest and then changing the nutrition. I feel so amazing. Seeing and and I don’t know what it is for each leader, but I do want to be a voice, that self care is a huge part of leadership that we have more to give we have we respond better, we’re less reactive when we do self care and sometimes deep self care. And I think often the somebody’s first response to conflict or stress in the workplace is to reach for a martini. And I just want to be a voice for, you know, going to the gym, maintaining self care in in challenging times as a leader because I think it really adds to our reserves.

Yeah, I think leaders sometimes have a hard time finding somebody to reach out to help for because they’re, you know, it’s lonely at the top. So, yeah, self care is a good strategy for leaders. Yeah.

I am super excited about our guest. today. Our guest is Jane Mulkewich. And she’s from Hamilton, Ontario. And she has had a varied career, leading to her current position as a legal director for a large union. So the UFC W locals, 175 and 633. And she leads a team of lawyers who are providing legal services to more than 70,000 workers. Jane is also a friend of ours, and she’s one of the most read people I know. I’m so excited to have her on our show. Jane, welcome to the program.

—

Welcome, Jane.

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Well, I am so excited to talk to you. Because I was thinking, wow, I’d like to know more about unions and the roles that they play. And I’m also curious about your role as a leader of lawyers working for a union. And I thought, well, what better way than to, you know, put you on the spot and get you to answer a lot of questions. So we are so excited that you’re here. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey as a lawyer?

Sure. I, I went to law school late in life, I’d already been working in various other jobs in the community. So I was in my 40s, when I first went to law school, which was an interesting experience. I used to say it was like when you lived in a house for a very long time. And finally you get to go down in the basement. And you can see that the foundations of everything that you’ve been familiar with, like we were talking about, you know, in constitutional law, we talked about Brian Mulroney and the Meech Lake Accord. And unlike some of the students in class at that time, I had been a political activist during those years, or we talked about marriage contracts and divorce. And I had already been through one of those. By the time I went to law school, or we talked about indigenous rights and and I had already worked as an activist on indigenous rights issues. And so going to law school helped me to understand some of the origins and concepts in law that, you know, we lived in our society that I’d already been active on a number of issues. So law school was, was a really eye opening for me in that sense. And so then from there, it was almost totally a matter of geography that I was looking for somewhere to article that was close by home because at that point, I had teenagers at home, I was a single mom of teenagers. And I didn’t want to commute to Toronto where a lot of the articling jobs were. So I ended up articling for legal aid Ontario in Milton, because they were the quickest growing community in Ontario at the time, Milton and they needed an articling student in a new program. So I was doing family law and criminal law. And I did that for a while. And then when I became a lawyer, I worked in a very underserved area, which is Brantford, Ontario, which was crying out for lawyers, working mostly with indigenous people who needed lawyers for family law and criminal law. And then again, a question of geography a friend called me and said, How would you like to work in Dundas, which is where I live, and at that time, a major union while they still do what the Ontario Nurses Association, they had a regional office there Hamilton office is actually located in Dundas. So walking distance from my house. So I worked for ona for a while for the nurses, and then went from there to CW. So you have CW as the second union I’ve worked for so a large trajectory and as I said, I’ve done other kinds of community oriented jobs, including a high profile anti racism role for the police in Hamilton before going to law school, I worked for doing a mental health project at a local community health center in Hamilton. And before that, I’d actually worked as a political staffer as a constituency assistant for a local member of Provincial Parliament. So I’ve had various roles, but when when I put it all together to go to law school, I sort of make it made it seem like a seamless journey. But I was just going from one thing to the other.

I tried to do that with my career to to, in retrospect, make it look like it made sense.

Yeah, maybe I’ll make sense in the pursuit of justice or something, you think of some higher goal? And you think, yes, that led me here to here to here.

That’s really interesting. Jane, was a while back, we did a podcast about being a plaintiff as an activist Melanie and I have been activists in various situations and throughout our lives, I’m wondering is if how being a lawyer either helps you in your activism? Or are there any ways that being a lawyer sort of, like, puts parameters around what you can do as an activist?

Its yes or no? Yeah, it’s an interesting question is sort of different parts of that question. I, to that second, part of the question about is there any limits at places on you, I suppose there are some lawyers who are willing to risk arrest and so on, but more usually lawyers in the activist movement, are volunteering their services, or sometimes volunteering, or sometimes paid, I guess, but to represent people who may be putting themselves on the line and risking arrest. So I know that every time there’s an action of some time of some kind of going out, there’s usually a call for lawyers, you know, who will be available for bail services, or, you know, anything like that for someone who is risking arrest? So so that is one way, you know, a very concrete and specific way that a lawyer can contribute. So yeah, I think that learning about the law informs a sense sense of act or can inform your activism. But the other way around to that learning about activism has informed the kind of lawyer that I want to be and you know, law law is very varied. You have corporate lawyers, you have human rights and union lawyers, you have, you know, criminal defense lawyers and people working on the other side working for the prosecutor. So it’s very hard to generalize about, you know, how people use law in the legal system. But But I think that’s how I see it as a tool. It’s one tool that can get you where you’re going. And it’s like any tool, even within the law, there are multiple tools, you know, I have conversations all the way, like, all the time that if someone is having an issue in the workplace, let’s say harassment, what are what are the various options, you know, if they were in a unionized environment, they can file a grievance, they can also go to the Human Rights Tribunal. They can also there’s provisions, now you can go an occupational health and safety route through the Minister of Labor, you can also go criminal harassment and lay police charges. You know, there’s a number of legal tools that you can use to solve the same problem. And sometimes it’s really helpful to be familiar with what those tools are to have the pros and cons and choose the best one.

I think that’s really interesting to think of them as tools. I think that’s fascinating. Let’s, let’s talk about unions for a minute. Let’s talk about your union. Otherwise, we’ll talk about your union. If if I were to Seth Godin has a question about lots of things, which I really like, which is what’s it for? So what’s what’s your union? For?

Sure. Well, any union in Ontario anyways has exclusive bargaining rights. In other words, if you belong to a union, it’s because that union has negotiated an agreement with your employer that they have exclusive bargaining rights. So you no longer have an individual contract with that employer, that everything, everything you do like your rate of pay your breaks, everything is negotiated by the union and not by you as an individual. Like, I’ll give you an example. When my son came home from a summer job, he had one site, I don’t need to get into details, but he said, like, Oh, if I work nights like that, from whatever time it was, from this time to this time, I get a premium pay. I said, Oh, you’re unionize them. And it goes, Well, how did you know? It’s like, because that’s what unions do. They negotiate things like premiums for the night shift. So so so they do that. But Plus, when you do belong to a union, you pay union dues, but there’s so much value added from for those union dues, for example, it pays for me, so that when you get into trouble at work, you don’t need to go out and hire a lawyer and say, I’m going to file a lawsuit and pay money out of your own pocket. You have a lawyer that’s paid for, in fact, a whole team of lawyers that’s paid for by your union dues, and you don’t have to pay me a sense, you know, I will go and represent you. Usually, the companies do have to hire lawyers, but most companies don’t have in house lawyers, but the union does. So the company is going to be very reticent about going to arbitration because they have to to spend money on lawyers, me, I get paid the same whether I go to arbitration or not. So I’m not afraid to take a case to arbitration and push as hard as we need to push for our members. And all of that is paid for out of your union dues. So it gives you more bargaining power in terms of wage rates. And in terms of all kinds of human rights, like, you know, if you are being harassed at work, those kinds of things, to have a better working conditions. And if there’s something that happens to you like, like, maybe you, you know, did something which you you now regret, but you’ve been disciplined for it or terminated from your job, you’re even if you’ve done something wrong, and your union is still there to represent you and give you the best representation that they can even if it just means negotiating a good severance package for you, or whatever it may be. So as lawyer, as a lawyer for a union, we do a vast array of work, everything from looking at individual, you know, grievances for someone who’s been disciplined or terminated, to policy kinds of things. Like, we were very busy during the COVID pandemic, about working conditions, you know, about policies about vaccinations about things like everything the employer was trying to do, like, they would change shift schedules and things like that to accommodate the pandemic. But once you have a collective agreement, you can’t make any of those changes without consulting the union because it’s a negotiated, working condition. Right. So, it when when, when something like a pandemic happens, it meant a lot of changes, and very, very busy times for the Union.

Where is the union? Where does it become like ours? I mean, that’s sort of one of them is, you know, when there’s a, I was thinking, where do they become cumbersome or, or more difficult? Like, what are some of the downsides are that that a system not so much a an employee or an employer, but where does the system get slowed down by a union?

I mean, of course, I, I don’t, I don’t think there’s a lot of downsides. Of course, there’s, there’s a potential for downside, as in any organization, you know, sometimes the leadership of an organization stops listening to its members they’re supposed to represent and becomes corrupt in some way. But I don’t think that’s anything unique to unions that can happen in any organization. So we hear about those things where there’s basically, you know, people doing bad things and unions, but that’s not a problem with the union, per se. And the other criticism that I’ve heard is that unions are built very much on seniority, that if you’ve worked somewhere for 25 years, that you should have some kind of priority over someone who’s just started working there. And we call that seniority. And it’s a concept sort of embedded in, in labor relations and how unions relate to employers. So that’s been criticized in the sense that it’s felt like it’s discriminatory towards younger or newer workers. And so, you know, without getting into naming any details, but there are some times when I think unions can be criticized for prioritizing the the rights or the entitlements of the more senior workers at with greater seniority rather than the younger workers. But but we also we’re all governed by the Ontario Human Rights Code, which applies across like, it’s a piece of legislation that takes priority over any other piece of legislation or the collective agreement, so that we can’t negotiate collective agreements, which are discriminatory to others on the basis of the grounds covered in the collective agreement, so on race, or age or anything like that, but seniority is still a value that’s enshrined in most collective agreements. And so that comes under some critique. But it’s, you know, I think that the unions, of course, are still interested in protecting or have a responsibility to protect the rights of all of their members, even the ones that have just started. But within the confines about, you know, if you’re choosing between two members, say for a vacant job, if everything else is equal, and so that’s the big if, if everything else is equal, most collective agreements would say that you pick the person with greatest seniority rather than the person with less seniority. So that’s a concept that’s up for some debate, but I think it’s still a concept that’s defended by everybody in the labor movement. Interesting, huh.

We had a discussion last week on campus. It was a conversation about Faculty Associations, and it turned out that every single question from the floor was about unionizing. And I don’t think it was, I don’t think it was organized as a panel about unionizing. But every question from before was about pros and cons and, and process and how, you know, how do we unionize? And one thing that I thought was really interesting We’ve been we’ve been talking about either we have collegial governance at the university, or we have a union and we have been resisting unionizing, because we love our collegial governance system. And the panelists said, That’s a false dichotomy. You can create a union that supports the processes of collegial governance. And I just wondered if that, if that’s something you’ve thought of if if, you know if, if that’s a dichotomy we should be worried about, or what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I don’t I think that whoever said that, that that’s a false dichotomy is correct that, that it doesn’t have to be two different things. You can go to any unions like constitution and you can enshrine in there, the principles you want to enshrine. And it should be in writing and trained in the Constitution, because you can’t always rely on a current culture to sort of continue into the future as people transition, like, move on and are there anymore, you know, unless it’s written down, and encoded, you can’t rely on that to stay. But I think that there’s a lot you can do, you know, if you’re, if you’re setting up a new union, or you can also join an existing union, and that’s maybe harder to imprint the style of government you want on an existing Union, but particularly if you’re starting a new union, I mean, a union is something that’s recognized in law as the sole collective bargaining agent, that’s all there is right? That it’s, it’s codified in the Labor Relations Act in terms of what a union does, and what they’re able to do in collective bargaining. But there’s no reason that you can’t have whatever governance model that you would like. And unions are governed in, in a diverse number of ways. Like, when I talk about the like to compare the two unions I’ve worked for, ona has many different smaller locals, like say, for each major hospital or, or, you know, community health center, they have smaller locals. But owner as an organization is province wide, with a similar number of members to our local, whereas your CW is organized differently. And we belong to a national union and an international union. And the National Union does a lot more organizing and doesn’t serve as the membership in the same way that our local does. So our local is very large, like local 175 covers basically the province and has the same number of members, if not more now than then ona does as as an overarching, provincial union. So even though we’re a local, we’re not a provincial or national union. Our I’ve been told that our local membership is the largest in all of North America, actually. So we’re very large. So our internal organization is different in or varies across unions. And, and some of the way that that, you know, the values like I would say that UFC w is known for very much, servicing the members, you know, the the reps go into the workplaces, and are very much aware of what the membership, what their concerns are, and files, grievances and other unions, I think, you know, maybe file less grievances or take fewer grievances arbitration or aren’t as no one for act of providing as much active servicing for their members. So unions can vary, and it can certainly, you know, that kind of collective governance that you’re talking about can certainly be part of how you decide to proceed as a as a unionized organization.

Thanks, Jane, I really appreciate this your comment about you can’t always count on the current culture moving forward. Because I think, you know, we’ve seen examples of governance that’s built on good, good faith and, and relying on respect for one another, and then when that doesn’t show up, then your governance might fall apart.

Yeah, and you can you can interact, like that’s what the Human Rights Code is there, you know, for things like if you want to train something like anti racism or respect, or a harassment free environment, but even if you don’t have that enshrined in your, in your documents for your organization, the Human Rights Code is there and it supersedes anything you have, but if there’s if there’s something about, you know, working collectively that’s important to you and your governance style, I think it should be you know, the practice of even agreeing on how to describe that as a good practice, right? Because it to write that down as a process like how do we put into words what it is that we valuable what we have here, and and the practice of writing that down is a good one. And then you have it in trying to and but even in training is probably the wrong word. Because it sounds like it’s sacred or something because it should also be a living document. You should be able to go back to it and review it and renew it every few years.

That’s really smart.

It’s like it’s like a strategic plan or something that you revisit this you don’t revisit a constitution. And so depends on what level documented. You don’t revisit a constitution very often, but, but I think any organization has to be open to change and, and moving forward in that way.

I want to shift just a little bit where leadership podcast and you lead a team. And I’m just curious, you know, the phrase herding cats comes to mind when I think of leading a team of lawyers, like, what are some of the things that you think about for yourself, as a leader, as you’re leading your team?

Another good question, I think that it’s, the first thing I think about right off the bat is that it’s my job to make sure that the team has all the tools and resources they need to do their job well, right. So I spent a lot of time thinking about that, to make sure that they have, you know, some of the physical resources like legal search engines, or that they, they know how to find information if they need it, and that kind of thing. But also, you know, making sure that they have specialized training if they need it, or, or that they have an environment where they can come together and ask questions when we have meet team meetings, things like that. But it’s also learning, you know, I think that it really requires a leader to know their team really well and know what works for them and what doesn’t, because it’s my job even to assign them cases. And the cases as they come in, and I have to assign them to counsel, any of them could do it, or theoretically could do it. But some of them might have more of an interest or a passion in some kind of case, some of them might have more of an aversion to a particular kind of case or more familiarity with certain kinds of cases. So you really have to know your team in terms of what their interests and skills are. And preferences are, as well as how they perform the work, you know, some of them, you know, there’s just lots of things to take into consideration, as well as balancing workloads and things like that. So there’s that. And then I think one of the things that I’m learning right now, because I have a fairly new team is, and this is hard to, to teach her to show, but really encourage the team or empower them to be an advocate, because you want to take on a case, and you don’t want to say well, gee, this case doesn’t have much of a chance of success, because sometimes our cases don’t have much of a chance of success. But our role as a Union as a whole is to hold the employer accountable. And sometimes that means just taking them to arbitration and explaining having them explain why it is they’re doing what they’re doing. Even if they eventually win the right to keep doing what they’re doing. At least they’ve had to come and explain in front of an arbitrator, why they’ve made that decision that the workers aren’t happy with. And maybe they’ll continue to be unhappy. And the employer will win the case in the sense of being able to keep doing what they’re doing. But at least we’ve had them be accountable about it. Like sometimes it might be about a change in technology, where all of a sudden they’re tracking, say you’re a driver for a company, and all of a sudden they’ve started tracking everywhere you drive and everything you do, and the workers don’t like that. So we file a grievance, and maybe we lose the grievance, but at least we’ve made the employer give the rationale and the reasonings for why they’re doing this and be accountable to someone about it. So what I tried to do as a leader is let the lawyers know that I don’t care if they win or lose a case that it’s a win just to take it forward to arbitration, you know, and it’s getting that sense of what the role is as an advocate.

That I think that’s I’m really touched as you say that just the idea that you’re gonna speak for people and it does like, I mean, I’ve been in my share of lawsuits over the years. And I don’t know if anyone ever wins a lawsuit like it. It’s always a painful process, but but the idea that you get to speak and have someone have to listen and have to respond, is powerful. And, and so I’m just really touched by that advocacy piece. And as a leader, like that you’re helping orient your team to the fact that that’s the value is is also incredibly powerful. So I’m really, really touched by what you just said.

Yeah it’s, it’s, you know, for someone who’s a new lawyer, it’s sometimes a bit of a difficult lesson because you want to go in and you want to win the cases, and you have to recalibrate what it is to win, right? Because sometimes what it is to win is just saying, You know what, I’m giving this person a chance to speak or what I’m taking I’m costing the employer lots of money to hire their lawyers to go to arbitration and explain themselves. You know, sometimes those are the wins it’s not that your your grievances actually sustained. You look at the winds where you can find them or you look at the bigger picture.

Yeah, what else Mel?

Well was interested in this idea of your assigning cases based on people’s interests or skills or experience? Do you? Are there any feedback loops? Do you ever get to hear whether your case assignments were on the mark or not?

Um, yeah, I’ve been able to find the individual lawyers and sometimes from, you know, other people involved, like the other reps or directors in the organization. And so sometimes, sometimes I’m limited by who I have available. And so, you know, it is what it is. But yeah, I mean, sometimes they’re not on the mark, in the sense that even even timeliness is a question right? Some, some lawyers are just able to complete some tasks quicker than others. So there’s, there’s lots lots of considerations. But I guess the feedback loops, as you call them are a little bit informal. Like there’s lots of things we can measure, we can measure how quickly a case goes forward. It’s harder to measure actual satisfaction, or the kinds of wins I’m talking about, that’s much more intangible and informal. We can measure when we do measure timeliness, you know how long it takes a case to go through the system. But that’s, that doesn’t always tell the whole story. And of course, we celebrate our wins, you know, when we get someone back to work who’s been terminated, because that does sometimes happen. Or when we get someone back on Ltd, you know, I personally want a case like that. That was it took six or seven years from start to finish. It was a long process, one of the longest ones that I’ve ever been involved in the longest one, or you know, there’s there’s others sort of remarkable wins we’ve had, and we celebrate those but the a lot of them are more of these intangible feelings about, you know, we’ve accomplished something here that that’s not always hard to, easy to measure. And of course, we have some we have interest arbitration too, for some of our units that cannot go on strike so that when they can’t agree on wage rates, and things like that, and collective bargaining, we go to an arbitrator. And we’re having more and more success with those cases as well. Of course, it’s it’s in that sector in the health care sector, like in long term care and retirement homes. Some of our members, not all of them have been impacted by the dampening effect of Bill 124, where there was a 1% cap. And of course, that’s been repealed, the government’s repealed it after they took it to court. But it will be a long time, if ever that those workers who had their wages kept during those years will will have to play catch up for a long time.
I have a question for you use the you talked about, like workplace harassment. You said that words multiple times, I was wondering if you could talk about just generally, what some of the kinds of harassment that you see regularly in the workplace? I think we use that word. We think we know what that means. But you actually have, you know, boots on the ground experience around this. And I’m curious, what kinds what are some of the common harassment issues that you see?

I have a question for you use the you talked about, like workplace harassment. You said that words multiple times, I was wondering if you could talk about just generally, what some of the kinds of harassment that you see regularly in the workplace? I think we use that word. We think we know what that means. But you actually have, you know, boots on the ground experience around this. And I’m curious, what kinds what are some of the common harassment issues that you see?

Well, I think you’re right that the word is used, very, very commonly to mean very different things. So under the Human Rights Code, it’s going to be harassment based on some kind of grounds that are protected by human rights. So sexual harassment, racial harassment, you know, anything that’s protected ground. I think sometimes in the workplace, people use the term harassment over broadly, like it might be their manager, harassing them to do something, when it’s really just a performance issue, you know, that person is being told, you know, you have to come to work on time, you have to do this, you have to do that. And it’s not sexual harassment, it’s not racial harassment, but the worker might call it harassment by their manager. So the first task of a union representative, you know, whether it’s the steward in the workplace, or or the rep is really to sort out what’s going on here. Is it really harassment? Is it something else, sometimes it’s some form of favoritism or discrimination where one worker is being treated differently than the other. And we might call it harassment, but it’s still not based on any of the grounds of the Human Rights Code. It’s not sexism, it’s not racism, it’s some kind of what I call favoritism, for lack of a better word. And so the lawyer or whoever’s looking after the case, whether it’s starting with the steward, and then the wrap, and then the lawyer really have to figure out what’s going on here. And sometimes it’s you someone is disciplined or terminated for some kind of behavior, and they’re saying, but I’m the victim here because I’ve been the victim of harassment. And and those are problems that are difficult to solve. And it’s probably the reason why a good 75 to 80% of the people that we have that are terminated, we say to them, or they come to believe and agree with us that it’s better to take some kind of severance package and go away and find another workplace Because this place has become so dysfunctional, so toxic, at least in terms of their experience that rather than staying and trying to fix it and making it harassment free zone, it’s just easier to move on somewhere else I’m being but it doesn’t fix the problem. So I think we hear about a lot about harassment because it is a very difficult problem to fix. And we also have, we now have mandated under occupational health and safety law that if if there is something going on in the workplace that amounts to harassment, there’s an obligation on the employer to investigate it. But then having investigated it, I mean, it’s great to have that obligation by law to investigate when there’s harassment happening in the workplace, but it’s then what are the action items to fix that to change it going forward? That’s the real problem, right? That’s where the work really begins. And and there’s not a lot of easy answer on on that. And I probably mentioned it once or twice, because it is one of those questions that keeps coming up again, and again. And again, because there are no easy answers. And you have to work through it on a case by case basis and saying, What is the best way to solve this problem? And sometimes for the individual? As I said, the answer is to leave the workplace. But it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem for the next person.

I have a question for you. That’s just sort of a general question. What’s the timeline like either Human Rights Tribunal or human rights claim from? Like, when it happens to some kind of resolution?

What do you know about that? Oh, quite a bit, and through no fault of their own, because there’s some good people who work at the Human Rights Tribunal. But it’s a provincially funded organization and the provincial government currently, Doug Ford, and the government’s before him have systematically gutted it. So that they’re just they just don’t have the resources. Like, we have hearings, like we have a hearing coming up in April, which is the Human Rights Tribunal hearing for a matter that was filed in 2018. That’s the kind of timeline we’re talking about. And they’re slow, they’re there. And again, it’s through no fault of their own. They’re just a really, really a systematically underfunded organization. And, and so and when you want to talk about what difference a union can make, some The reason I know quite a lot about it, is that some of our union members say, oh, no, thanks. I’m not gonna have the union file agreements. I’ll try my luck at the Human Rights Tribunal. And I’m actually, you know, working on trying to disseminate word to our members, about the pros and cons. I mean, sometimes, you know, it’s like, I’m not going to stop anyone who wants to go to the Human Rights Tribunal. They have that right. But it’s almost always a slower process. Well, it is, it always is a slower process, you know, a grievance arbitration. Sometimes it takes longer than we would like to get it to grievance, but to get arbitration, but it’s going to be a lot faster than the current rates of the Human Rights Tribunal. And the other thing is, for a grievance, you’re going to have representation by a union lawyer, you don’t have that at the Human Rights Tribunal, you go on your own, and you can use the services of the Human Rights Legal Services Center. But most people go unrepresented, or they have to hire their own lawyer out of their own pocket. There’s other pros and cons. But because the Human Rights Code is something that supersedes all areas of law, including collective agreements and labor law, I’ve heard it said, and I remember it, it really caught my attention at the time I heard it said is that most human rights law in Ontario is being made not by the Human Rights Tribunal, but by Labor arbitrators, because in terms of the volume of cases that go forward, that are considering human rights principles, the largest volume of those cases are being decided by Labor arbitrators, not by the members of the Human Rights Tribunal.

That’s really interesting. Um, I feel like we’re kind of give one more question, or do you feel like we could?

I was just gonna say, Yeah, I was gonna say you’ve had a really interesting career. And I think it occurs to me that it’d be really meaningful and fulfilling to have a career that’s based in values. And I think it looks like that’s what you’ve done. You’ve just been motivated by the values you’ve hold and, and, and then therefore, this career has unfolded, which is really fantastic.

Um, sometimes at this point in our podcasts, we ask people, like, Where can people find you like, if they have a product to sell? I don’t know if you want people to find you. I don’t know if you want more connections or you know, people that ask you questions, but if you do, I want to give you that opportunity.

Well, you know, when you work for a union, you’re not looking for clients, and that your client is one client, which is the union. So no, I’m not looking for clients. But I’m very well, I’m not hard to find in the sense I’m out there on social media and not hard to find. And I just want to say to Mel’s point, I mean, I consider myself very fortunate in that every day I go to work and I have lots of flex civility and autonomy and in my my work life, but also lots of meaning. Like, I feel assured that I’m working on issues that have real impact and real meaning in people’s lives and like keeps me motivated. You know, I still do sort of some some activist activities. But yeah, most of them are, you know, I don’t need to. I mean, I like to be well connected and community, because I think that’s essential to move any community work forward. But I don’t need to be seen as a highly visible person, I am there. As you know, in preparation for this podcast, one of my favorite quotes came to mind is from Lao Tzu that, and I’ll probably screw up the quote, but it’s basically when your work is done, the people will say, we’ve done it ourselves. And that has always been my highest sense of what being a leader is all about is that you want to provide the tools and resources and the mobilization for the community to get where it needs to go. But you don’t need to be on a pedestal to do that. So that when the work is done, that people will say, we’ve done this ourselves, and, and that’s the kind of leader I aspire to be. So I don’t necessarily need people to be knocking at my door, I need people to be out there and doing the kind of work that they want to do to change the community and change their workplace change their, their society in whichever ways they think it needs changing.

Thank you so much for being here, Jane. It’s been such a pleasure. And I’ve learned so much. Thank you. Thank you.

See you again soon, I hope.

Yeah, I hope we see you soon.

—

Wow, that was super interesting talking to Jane about all of that. What did what were you like? What were you taken by?

That was a really interesting conversation. One of the things that struck me from a leadership perspective was having to tell for lawyers, when they want because they’re going into a into a conflict. And you know, you have this preconception that winning means that the opponent has been defeated. But in fact, she has to tell him no, if you’ve, if you’ve opened up the conversation, if you’ve made sure your client has been heard, you created an opportunity to understand why the other side is doing what they’re doing. Like those are wins and winning may not look like like you thought it was and I thought I thought that was interesting framing that as leadership making sure they No, no, actually, you want something here. And the other thing that I thought was really interesting was this idea of just, you know, I commented that her whole career has been has been motivated by her values and consistent with her values. And I think that’s a really fulfilling career way to have a career.

Well, and I was really taken by this idea of feedback loops. So even just like on the big, you know, meta scale that arbitration or it’s a feedback loop for the employer, and it’s a it’s a structured, mandated feedback sort of feedback loop so that there is a dialogue between employees and employer and I hadn’t thought about it exactly that way. So winning or losing, it’s still a feedback loop, which is probably more valuable than winning or losing. So I was really struck by that. Well, it’s been a great day. With you, Mel. It’s great to see you and go experiment,

Go experiment!

 

Important Links: 

Jane Mulkewich

 

Jane Mulkewich is from Hamilton, Ontario, and has had a varied career leading to her current position as Legal Director of a large union (UFCW Locals 175 & 633) leading a team of lawyers and providing legal services to more than 70,000 workers in workplaces across Ontario.

She likes to say she went from the law-makers (as a political staffer) to the law-enforcers (doing high-profile anti-racism work in the Office of the Chief of the Hamilton Police Service) to becoming a lawyer later in life.

Other than labour law, she has also practiced family law and criminal law, and continues her life-long interest in community development organizations, serving on boards of directors or being involved as an activist in a myriad of other ways.

 

 

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join The Experimental Leader community today: