The general objectives of the CUPW Union Education Program are:

~ to give working people the tools to critically analyze and make sense of the world in which we live;

~ to develop skills;

~ to instill confidence; and

~ to encourage workers to get involved in change.


Specific objectives of the four-week program:

~ to make explicit the values the union's orientation represents;

~ to identify and analyze the different beliefs fuelling the capitalist agenda;

~ to expose the ideology of the free market, so participants with diverse backgrounds develop a common understanding of the ideas the course challenges;

~ to reveal why getting rid of unions is a key objective of free marketers;

~ to define economic issues and human rights from a working class and trade union perspective;

~ to give participants a sense of the big picture and the necessity for international solidarity;

~ to build an empathetic understanding of how an injury to one is an injury to all;

~ to show how an understanding of history and class is essential to advancing the interests of workers;

~ to identify allies and effective ways of working together for justice; and

~ to help participants plan to put what they've learned into action when they go back to their communities, their workplaces and their union.