Client Education

You’d like to learn about important legal issues that affect you and your members, wouldn’t you?

Our clients work hard to meet their obligations in complicated and constantly changing legal, regulatory and economic environments. We’re here to help. That’s where our client education program, Leading Questions, comes in.

Leading Questions events address the issues that confront you and your organization. They are held regularly, and include seminars, workshops, podcasts, guest speakers, and more. We answer the questions you’ve been wondering about, as well as those you didn’t even know you had.

Many of you may recall our successful Laws & Bagels client seminars held some years ago. Those seminars addressed many legal issues of importance to our clients. Leading Questions carries on that tradition, but offers other ways to engage and learn in addition to traditional client seminars.

Since the start of the pandemic, Goldblatt Partners has been offering client seminars via Zoom, which has allowed many more of our clients to participate, including those outside the Greater Toronto area.

If you are a Goldblatt Partners client, and would like to receive registration information for Leading Questions events, please email: leadingquestions@goldblattpartners.com and ask to be added to our mailing list. Make sure to indicate which organization you work for.

If you’re already on our email list, all you need to do is keep an eye out for the invitations to the seminars, typically sent about 4 weeks in advance of each seminar.

Some of our recent webinars have included:

• Trauma-Informed Union Representation – This webinar was designed to equip union leaders and representatives with the knowledge and skills necessary to approach their work through a trauma-informed lens. We discussed how trauma can impact individuals’ behaviour and emotions; provided some insights into the guiding principles of trauma-informed union representation; suggested some practical tips for integrating trauma-informed practices into union representation practices; and explored techniques for managing vicarious trauma.
• Rules of the OLRB – In this follow up to a previous webinar on the OLRB, we examined the world of unfair labour practices – What unions should do when an employer interferes with a union organizing campaign, bargains in bad faith or changes working conditions during bargaining, disciplines a member for their union activity, and more.
• Privacy in the Workplace – We discussed how privacy law is rapidly evolving in response to technological developments and other changes in the workplace – from social media and the ubiquity of live-streamed or videotaped content, to evolving forms of employee performance monitoring and surveillance.
• What Unions Need to Know about AI, Automation and New Technologies – We looked at how emerging technologies are being integrated into the workplace and what unions need to do to prepare; the implications these technologies have for workers doing scheduling, educators monitoring plagiarism, or creative industries being copied by AI; and how unions can bargain to protect their members’ work and jobs.

The Winter 2025 season will start on January 14th at 10 a.m. with a webinar on Political Speech by Unions and Employees. Clients can join our mailing list to find out more.

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Client-specific seminars and training

We regularly speak at in-house educational events organized by our clients for their own staff and representatives. The legal issues we’ve been asked to address in recent months include: social media in the workplace; how to navigate the grievance and arbitration process; human rights issues in collective bargaining; family status discrimination; pay equity; and an update on recent arbitration cases.

We are always available to help you with your in-house seminars. If you would like us to speak at an event you have organized, or to develop a seminar, webinar, or workshop for your organization, please contact Kelly Doctor.