Definitely. Thank you for the question, because I believe this is a really important one. Rates of disability in Canada are fairly high, and barriers to employment are even higher. The reasons behind my really needing to have a unionized work site are multifactorial. Some of it is securing, say, in benefits packages, the pieces of compensation that support the additional costs I have in my life due to my health care and the wear and tear that my body and brain take from my work.
Some of it is also that we live in a reality and a society that have a lot of ableism and a lot of misconceptions about people with disabilities, which can create further barriers in my work. Sometimes what is really helpful is being able to have not only my other members there to stand alongside me but also access to really good servicing representatives who are able to come in when I need, to process grievances, to join me in joint labour management and to help me in health and safety. These are the sorts of committees I've sat on, and they've also given us the opportunity to bring in ADRs—alternative dispute resolutions—for both indigenous and non-indigenous employees so that people have multiple ways of resolving issues as they come up, and to advocate for accessibility in the work environment.
These are things that I have found to be just not doable within non-unionized environments. Actually, much of the time when I've engaged in a version of my own joint labour management in non-unionized work sites, what I have found is that we might as well put a union in there and make sure that our protections are actually much more sound legally.