Education Resources
Past All Member Sessions & Resources
Mental Health at Work (MHW): Awareness
Facilitator: Lucette Wesley
Webinar Description:
This workshop helps members gain understanding and build comfort in talking about mental health and mental illnesses. The focus will be on how members can make their workplace better and how they can help themselves and co-workers. The following topics will also be discussed:
- How to support co-workers who may be experiencing poor mental health
- Learning about the signs and symptoms of common mental illnesses
- Developing strategies to maintain your own mental health and build your mental resiliency
Resources:
Mental Health at Work: Awareness Slide Handout
CMHA Workplace Training Brochure
MHW: Resiliency During Unusual Times
Facilitator: Lucette Wesley
Webinar Description:
Members will learn how to build resiliency and practice self-care even while experiencing normal reactions to this unusual time in the midst of COVID-19. The focus will be on developing an understanding of the impact the current stressors have had on well-being, how to recognize the signs of stress, and how to react appropriately by developing strategies for stress.
Resources:
Mental Health at Work (MHW): Compassion Fatigue
Facilitator: Lucette Wesley
Webinar Description:
This workshop is designed to help us understand what compassion fatigue is, and to use the ABCs of prevention by:
- Building Awareness and recognizing the signs in ourselves and those around us
- Developing skills to bring Balance in our lives by using effective coping strategies and understanding the difference between depleting and nourishing activities
- Connecting and building positive support systems both in our personal and work life
Resources:
Yam Bread (Sweet Potato Rolls) Recipe
Burnout
Facilitator: Laurel Collins
Webinar Description:
This workshop is designed to help us understand what burnout is, how it happens and ways to prevent and manage it. Key topics include:
- What Burnout is and isn’t
- Path to Burnout
- Causes of Burnout
- Symptoms of Burnout
- Risk Factors
- Ways to stave off Burnout
- Managing Burnout
Resources:
Healthy Coping Strategies
Facilitator: Rob Baker
Webinar Description:
This workshop is designed to help us understand what stress is, the effects and causes of stress and teach healthy coping strategies. Key topics include:
- What is stress?
- Healthy vs. Unhealthy Stress
- Effects of Distress
- Causes of Stress
- Stress vs. Anxiety
- Coping Strategies
Resources:
Grief and Loss
Facilitator: Rob Baker
Webinar Description:
This workshop is designed to help us understand what grief is, the different stages and types of grief and coping strategies, as well as ways to support others dealing with grief. Key topics include:
- What is Grief?
- The Emotional and Physical Tolls of Grief
- Different Types of Grief
- Stages of Grief
- Grief and COVID 19
- Coping Strategies
- Supporting Others
Resources:
Conflict Resolution: Making the Shift to Collaborative Engagement
Facilitator: Kerry Palmer
Webinar Description:
This session will create opportunities for increased self-awareness on members' personal approach to addressing conflict, clarity on what is collaboration and awareness of basic communication skills that support a collaborative approach. Key topics include:
- Conflict learning and impact.
- The dichotomy of conflict.
- What is a collaborative process?
- What is required to be collaborative?
- The language and mindset of collaboration.
- Communications skills that support collaboration.
Resources:
Worker's Compensation Board & Long Term Disability Overview
Facilitator: Jodie Gauthier
Webinar Description:
This session will give an overview of WCB and LTD benefits and processes to increase members ability to understand and navigate these benefits. Key topics include:
- Overview of benefits and the differences between the two.
- Where to identify entitlements.
- Procedural and jurisdictional appeals.
- Intersection with bullying and harassment claims.
Resources:
Discipline 101
Facilitator: Jodie Gauthier
Webinar Description:
This webinar will provide members with an introduction to and brief overview of the discipline process, focusing on basic cases and concepts. Key topics include:
- Just Cause.
- Mitigation Circumstances.
- Progressive Discipline.
- The difference between culpable and non-culpable conduct.
- Human Rights considerations.
- Remedies and Settlement.
- Misconduct relevant to the Public Sector.
Resouces:
Conflict Resolution: From Aggressive to Assertive Communication
Facilitator: Kerry Palmer
Webinar Description:
This session will provide opportunities for increased self-awareness to assertive communication, the personal mindset of assertive communication, as well as creating comfort and awareness to communication skills that support assertive communication. Key topics include:
- What is aggressive communication, what does it look like and sound like?
- What is goal of aggressive communication?
- What is assertive communication, what does it look like and sound like?
- What is the goal of assertive communication?
- What are the communication skill sets associated with assertive communication?
Past Local Reps Sessions & Resources
Bullying & Harassment in the Workplace
Facilitator: Conni Kilfoil
Webinar Description:
This is a case-based introductory course about bullying and harassment in the workplace, intended to raise awareness and understanding of both human rights types of harassment, and personal (or non-human rights) harassment, as well as the related concepts of psychological harassment and bullying, as they arise in employment.
More Information: Course Outline
Mental Health at Work (MHW): Managers, Supervisors and Union Leaders
Facilitator: Lucette Wesley
Webinar Description:
In this workshop, participants will gain an understanding of mental health and mental disorders in the workplace context, in terms of supporting individual employees/members and of building psychological health and safety in their workplace. The four-hour workshop provides more knowledge and opportunities to build skills in recognizing and addressing signs of possible health issues affecting an employee/member as well as steps to improve factors that influence well-being at work. This workshop is interactive, with opportunites for discussion.
Resources:
Responding with Respect: Managers Scenarios and Aid for Observers
RWR: 4R Action Toolkit - Responding Effectively
Crisis Contacts and Resources CMHA
Disability Rights: The Duty to Accommodate in the Workplace
Facilitator: Conni Kilfoil
Webinar Description:
This course is an overview of the development of the duty to accommodate as it arises in employment. Using the BC Human Rights Code as a starting point, it reviews the concepts of discrimination, equality, and the legal and historical framework for the development of the concept of “accommodation”.
More Information: Course Outline
Basic Human Rights for Union Activists
Facilitator: Adrienne Smith
Webinar Description:
This workshop provides an overview of the legal protections workers enjoy under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, human rights legislation, collective agreements, and employer policies. Participants will learn about: prohibited grounds, protected area, the anatomy of a human rights claim, and available Remedies.
More Information: Course Outline
Past Chapter-Specific Training & Resources
GLP Training
Evidence for Democracy Webinars
In June of 2020, Evidence for Democracy (E4D) worked with our GLP chapter to release Spotlight on Integrity, an in-depth report looking at the state of scientific integrity and science capacity in BC. The report, based on survey responses from GLP members, outlined ongoing challenges facing scientific professionals in the provincial government and laid out key recommendations for addressing those gaps.
With a new provincial government here in BC, all PEA members have an opportunity to connect with their representatives about the issues that matter to their chapter. Over the past six months the PEA collaborated with E4D to present five webinars to members. The PEA would like to acknowledge with gratitude all the presenters who shared their knowledge through these sessions.
Recordings and resources from these webinars can be found on the PEA Lobbying Page.
Additional Resources
Transgender Education
Trans Care BC offers online courses on gender diversity and creating gender-affirming environments which can be accessed here.
In this section
The PEA was formed in 1974, by a group of professionals working in the public sector. The story goes that the founders of the union mortgaged their houses to fund negotiations of the union’s first collective agreement.
Now, the PEA is BC’s union for professionals. We represent a wide range of professionals including lawyers, foresters, engineers, agrologists, teachers, veterinarians, fundraisers, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologists program managers, librarians and more.
Our union is led by the PEA Executive. They represent members from across the chapters of the PEA and set the overall vision and direction for our union.
Resources for our members
Navigating a union can sometime be a challenging process. Under this section of the website you will find resources to help you navigate the PEA. In the members section you'll find expense claim reimbursements, information on the PEA's scholarship and bursary program and our grants and donations program.
Collective bargaining and job action resources explain the process of collective bargaining and what to do in the unlikely event of job action.
Local reps can also find resources to help them complete their job more effectively. This includes ways to welcome new members, how to take notes in investigation disciplinary meetings and more.
The heart of our union
The PEA is made up of nine chapters, or groups of members who either work for the same employer or are in the same field of work. Each chapter has an elected executive tasked with running the affairs of the chapter. Each chapter is entitled to representation at the PEA Executive, the governing body of the union.
Our members work for a range of employers: the Province of BC, the University of Victoria, St. Margaret's School, the Family Maintenance Enforcement Program, the Oil and Gas Commission, the Law Society of BC, Legal Services Society, the Okangan Regional Library and health authorities across BC.
Professionals need unions now more then ever
Since the 1970’s, when the PEA was formed, our mission has been to ensure our members can work in safe, productive environments and receive fair and reasonable wages and benefits for the valuable work they do. We help individuals and groups of professional workers to understand the challenges they face in their workplaces and some of the solutions available to them.
We work with potential members to become certified as a union and achieve the wages, benefits and respect they deserve.
