A voice for victims

With sexual harassment scandals at the CBC and Parliament Hill, and the 25th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, the last two months of 2014 presented plenty of opportunity for reflection on harassment and violence against women.

But for Julie White, that terrible anniversary — when a gunman killed 14 women at École Polytechnique — is also a reminder of why Unifor works to help make safer workplaces for women.

"Dec. 6 (was) the 25th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and it was a day, I think, that all Canadians stood still. It was kind of that defining moment for us where we recognized and started that conversation again around violence against women," said White, London, Ont.-based director of Unifor’s women’s department.

"As a union, we knew we had to do something. We were doing things outside of the workplace in terms of fighting for things like childcare and affordable housing — all those economic pieces that help women leave violent relationships — but as a union, we knew that we had power at the bargaining table."

Unifor’s Women’s Advocate Program, launched in 1993, is a resource for women who are facing workplace harassment or domestic violence — either at home or at work.

"She can turn to somebody in the workplace and seek out support, community or workplace resources that she can use to escape violence," said White.

The program is a joint initiative between the union and the employer, which provides a management support person to work with the advocate.

The program is a real point of pride for the union, wrote Jerry Dias, national president of Unifor in Toronto.

"I am incredibly proud of Unifor’s groundbreaking Women’s Advocate Program. These specially trained, easy-to-contact workplace representatives have been instrumental in creating healthier workplaces and safer communities. They work closely with management, ensuring strong co-operation to achieve this goal," said Dias in a Unifor report.

"One of the best tools the union has to prevent violence against women and workplace harassment is the Women’s Advocate Program."

Unifor now has more than 300 women’s advocates across the country, and the program is growing.

"We’ve got women’s advocates who are fish harvesters in Newfoundland on boats and outports; we’ve got women’s advocates who are working in long-term care facilities and hospitals across the country; we have women’s advocates who are working with Air Canada… and in the manufacturing sectors where we first negotiated it," said White.

Bell Aliant is one of the most recent workplaces to implement women’s advocates, with four new advocates — one in each of the Atlantic provinces — to be trained.

"Creating healthy, respectful and safe workplaces is a real priority for Bell Aliant," said Jennifer Palov, HR director at Bell Aliant in Halifax.

"Unifor’s Women’s Advocate Program is a groundbreaking initiative that fits really well with our existing workplace policies and initiatives. We are pleased to support Unifor’s Women’s Advocate Program as part of our new collective agreement and we look forward to collaborating to implement this important and progressive program in our workplace."

Ford Canada is another workplace with women’s advocates in place — the company first became involved with the Unifor program through a contractual agreement in 1993, and has been a strong partner ever since, said White.

"Ford is dedicated to providing fair and equitable treatment for all employees. Ford supports the Women’s Advocate Program because a safer workplace is an employer’s responsibility," said David Nangini, union relations manager at Ford Motor Company of Canada in Oakville, Ont. "A women’s advocate in the workplace can help by providing avenues through which women can seek assistance and resources in the community."

After a new women’s advocate has been selected, she undergoes an extensive training process, said White.

"She goes through an intensive 40-hour — paid by the employer — basic training. She networks with a group of advocates throughout the country. There’s lots of different pieces to the training because when women are facing violence, there’s lots of other issues that are often associated with that violence."

Training is presented by experts on many different issues, including a legal expert who teaches advocates about their legal responsibilities, and an expert on suicide prevention.

The training also involves taking the advocates to a local women’s shelter, said White.

"So when a woman comes to our advocate, she can talk to her about the services that are available at the women’s shelter and really have the personal experience of going into the shelter, where the intake workers will walk our advocates through what a woman will experience when she knocks on the door of that shelter," she said.

Advocates are also trained on communication skills — and on self-care and protecting their own safety.

"It’s a really tough job to be an advocate because, first of all, you’re hearing some pretty traumatic things, often, that are happening in the lives of our members and sometimes their children… so we talk to them about how they take care of themselves, and their safety," said White.

"Often people, when they’re hearing these things, they just want to get in there and help, they want to remove women from the situation. Sometimes they want to take them into their own home, so we talk to them about how that’s not something they should be doing — they need to take care of themselves in those situations.

"It’s about keeping themselves safe and also keeping the women and often their families safe."

The Women’s Advocate Program isn’t just about providing support for individual women — it’s also about changing workplace culture for the better, said White.

"That’s a byproduct of the women’s advocate program," she said. "We’ve often had men who’ve gone to the women’s advocate, looking for support for their daughters, their mothers, their friends, their co-workers. But also, sometimes they’ve reached out because they are the perpetrators and they know that the advocate has those resources."

The program encourages women to report and communicate about instances of violence or harassment because there is a clearly identified advocate for them to approach.

"We’ve heard of accusations (of sexual harassment) in the House of Commons, in the CBC, so I think that really speaks to how important it is for us to have designated people in workplaces when situations are happening, that people can turn to for help without worrying about repercussions," said White.

"We’ve heard in some of these situations that women were nervous about reporting it because they were concerned about their advancement in the workplace and how that might impact their careers. So by changing the culture in the workplace to make employers and employees and union reps understand that we’ve got an obligation to ensure that workplaces are healthy and safe, and providing those designated people in the workplaces will go a long way."