Contract Action Team (CAT) and Leadership Training

Labor Education offers recurring Zoom trainings on discreet topics. In these trainings members will learn: 

• Tools to engage your co-workers, throughout your facility, to get them involved.
• To prioritize the units you should spend more time on.
• How to identify leaders.
• How to help build the CAT and win a strong contract!

The following trainings are open to all members but are essential for facilities going into contract bargaining in the next year.

Collective Bargaining Fights: What is a Contract Campaign? (90 mins.)

This workshop will cover the basic concepts and skills involved in building a strategic, escalating campaign around staffing, wages, and benefits for nurses. With examples from NYSNA and other union campaigns, participants will be presented with strategies on how to put pressure on employers to achieve nurses’ contract demands. We will discuss what goes into a campaign plan, from the initial preparatory phases well ahead of the first bargaining session, to how to establish dominance at the bargaining table through member engagement and open bargaining, to the escalation phase building up to creating a crisis for the employer, to final resolution.

Collective Bargaining Fights: What is a Contract Action Team? (60 mins.)

The Contract Action Team (CAT) is the lynchpin of any successful bargaining campaign. It is a group of members responsible for keeping the broader membership informed and engaged in the bargaining process, and for mobilizing the members to take action. This workshop will cover the roles and responsibilities of Contract Action Team members, how the CAT fits into the overall bargaining campaign plan, and how we build power through escalating collective actions.

Collective Bargaining Fights: Identifying Leaders and Building the Contract Action Team (120 mins.)

The most effective Contract Action Teams (CAT) are representative of the whole membership and composed of members who are already seen as leaders by their co-workers. This training will focus on how to chart a workplace to assess our strength as a union, tap into existing workplace and social networks to identify leaders and recruit them as CAT members, and test the effectiveness of our leadership structures to ensure we have what it takes to win.

Collective Bargaining Fights: Mobilizing Members and Rounding (120 mins.)

The revolution will not be on WhatsApp! We know that the most effective way to mobilize the power of our membership is by rounding on units and having hundreds of face-to-face conversations. How do we
have these conversations effectively, in ways that build trust, build relationships, overcome fear, and motivate people to take action? What are our legal rights when we round, and what are some dos and don’ts? This training will cover these and many other topics and will also provide opportunities for practice.