CALM helps labour communicators build skills
CALM holds at least one training conference a year, usually in the spring. For two tiring days, editors attend hands-on workshops to acquire new skills or improve on what they already know. Writing, editing, photography, design, communications, desktop publishing and creating web pages are some of the topics taught by seasoned labour communicators.

Beginners go through a special new editors course, in which they learn how to do a newsletter by producing one during the conference.

Participants attend four three-hour workshops. Class size is small to promote learning. The conference is usually held at a university so that classes have access to computer labs. And CALM conferences are always a source of new ideas. Non-members are welcome to attend CALM conferences.

CALM / Labour Tech Conference 2010
This year, the annual CALM conference was in Windsor, Ontario. CALM and LabourTech joined forces. If you are interested in the calibre of presenters, here are some brief instructor biographies.

Workshop Leaders
2010 CALM conference workshop leaders

Rosemarie Bahr, a graduate of the University of Windsor, has been the CALM editor for the past decade and a bit. She has written and edited countless union publications and political leaflets and once even judged graphic awards (for the UAW, not CALM).

Marc Bélanger is an international labour educator specializing in the use of technology for distance education. He produces and hosts news programs on RadioLabour (www.radiolabour.net). He did communications for CUPE, set up SoliNet, and has worked for the International Labour Organisation.

Peter D. Birt is the manager of communications and government relations for the Ontario Nurses’ Association. He was the head of communications and IT for the national office of the United Steelworkers and has been a senior communicator with one of Canada’s top five banks, the Ontario government, a work-health research centre and an international charity.

Derek Blackadder is a national representative with CUPE and senior correspondent for LabourStart.org in Canada. He has been playing and working with computer- based communications for unions since the 1980s and looks it.

Eric Boucher is a communication, media and film graduate from the University of Windsor. He is a wellrounded filmmaker, specializing in cinematography. In September, he will be pursuing an MFA in film production at York University.

Kathryn Carruthers is the network administrator for the National Union of Public and General Employees and has been working with websites and databases since the first version of Apache and IIS (around 1995). She was converted to Drupal about two years ago, and now can’t imagine how she ever got along without it.

Pat Daley has worked as a communications representative for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ontario region, since 2002. A graduate of the Carleton University School of Journalism, Pat has worked as a writer, editor and broadcaster as well as in communications, especially for the NDP in Ontario and Alberta.

Don Ford has been a communication officer with OPSEU for the last eight years, a job that he says is never the same two days in a row.

Mike Gauthier is past editor of CAW 199 News and works in the communications department at GM St. Catharines. Starting with film cameras and darkrooms at a young age, he embraced electronic photography with passion and now shoots exclusively digital.

Anne M. Gregory has been a labour activist for over 20 years. As a broadcast journalist at CBC, she was a member of CUPE, ACTRA, NABET, and the NRPA. She also earned a law degree, and is in-house counsel at CUPE as well as a stalwart member of the Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers.

Collin Gribbons has worked with unions since 1977, when he edited the precursor of CALM’s labour news service. He founded Union Communications, a unionized creative and advertising agency, in 1983 and now, among other work, helps unions develop websites using the WordPress publishing platform.

Tim Groves is a Toronto based investigative researcher and reporter. He has been sharing his research skills with a variety of activist and community groups since 2003.

Martin Jansen, from South Africa, is the director of Workers’ World Media Productions. He was a trade unionist with the COSATU affiliated Chemical Workers Industrial Union. Martin has a long history of student, youth and community activism. He currently chairs the Labour Media Consortium, a national forum of trade union media officers and labour service organizations.

Pam Kapoor is a Gatineau-based consultant and writer specializing in advocacy communications, messaging and in helping progressive organizations harness new media to convey messages more effectively, more broadly.

Crawford Kilian is the author of Writing for the Web. He has also published scores of online articles and 20 other books.

Deepa Kumar is an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers in New Jersey. Her areas of research include media, war, and imperialism; media, globalization, and class; media and gender; and Islam, the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy. She has also been active in various social movements for peace and justice. Her first book, Outside the Box: Corporate Media, Globalization and the UPSStrike, is about how collective struggle can affect the media and society in progressive ways.

Chris Lawson has been producing union websites since 1997. He works for the Public Service Alliance of Canada, in Ottawa.

Eric Lee is the founding editor of LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement.

Sally Leitch has been CALM’s associate editor and web expert for more than 10 years. She studied journalism at Ryerson and has worked with politicians and with wood.

Joe Matyas recently retired from a 40-year career in daily journalism and 20 years as a union local officer (CEP Local 87-M, the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild). He has written and edited thousands of news stories, feature articles, columns and commentaries on a wide range of topics. In his last two years at The London Free Press, Joe added videography to his print skills.

Christine McKenzie is a popular educator who has worked with a variety of social justice and union groups over the past 15 years. One of her favorite moments in this work was supporting a successful CUPE 3903 strike using popular education processes.

Doreen Meyer, CALM president, works for CUPE in Ottawa. As a communications officer, she edits, writes and helps coordinate projects for national departments and branches. .

Wayne MacPhail is the director of emerging media at rabble.ca. He teaches online journalism at Ryerson University and the University of Western Ontario.

Kelly Nicholas is the training and education coordinator for UFCW Locals 175 & 633. She believes online education is more than an “information dump” if you pay attention to engaging methodology and participation on various levels.

Karrie Ouchas is a CALM executive member, an OPSEU member and experienced writer and local newsletter editor.

Terry Pedwell has been a reporter and editor with The Canadian Press for more than 20 years. He has worked as a political reporter and a war correspondent and covered everything from prime ministers to natural disasters to uprisings in Haiti. He’s president of the Canadian Media Guild’s CP branch.

Mark Reale is a web developer at Union- Web, co-founder and program coordinator at the Yorkville Media Centre, and professor at Seneca College in media fundamentals, independent photography, and acting for camera and voice.

Randy Robinson is a member of the CALM Executive and works in Toronto as acting political economist for the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. He came to the new job after 15 years as a communications officer for the union.

Laurie Sabourin is currently the OPSEU In Solidarity editor and has been a local newsletter editor for 15 years.

Joe Sarnovsky is the communications director for CAW Local 222 in Oshawa. For the past 10 years, he’s edited the local’s monthly, the Oshaworker. Joe has proudly served on the CALM executive for the past three years.

Sam Vrankulj teaches in the McMaster University School of Labour Studies and is the academic coordinator of the CAW-McMaster University Labour Studies Certificate Program. He’s been involved in adult and union education for many years and is currently education chair of CAW Local 555.

Debbie Wilson is a freelance graphic artist and cartoonist who lives in Guelph. She has been involved with CALM since the early 90s and has worked with a variety of unions across Canada designing everything from billboards and picket sign graphics to t-shirts.

James Winter is a professor of communication at the University of Windsor. He is the author or editor of five books on the media, and many chapters, articles, and papers. He was the founding editor of The Electronic Journal of Communication in 1990, and is currently the editor and publisher of Flipside, an award-winning, muckraking alternative online daily at www.flipside. org. He has published articles in the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, Canadian Forum, Canadian Dimension, Our Times, Prairie Dog, GreenLeft Weekly, and elsewhere.
He has worked as a CBC commentator and local correspondent in Ottawa and Windsor, and has made hundreds of appearances in stories about the media.