Steward Training

Training and Education

Local 1000’s training and leadership initiatives aim to empower stewards to effectively represent members, advocate for their rights, and build a strong union by equipping them with the necessary skills and knowledge to navigate workplace issues and lead their colleagues. Training helps stewards develop leadership skills, including communication, negotiation, and conflict resolution, enabling them to lead their colleagues and build a strong union presence. We believe in the mantra of “agitate, educate, organize,” encouraging all of our members to use education and organizing as a tool to build power in our union and in their personal lives. We do this through monthly enrichment courses, introductory training programs for new developing stewards, and our online training module.

LAPS Application

Online Portal

Monthly Steward Courses:

Local 1000’s vision for the 2026 Steward Training Curriculum is to build an unstoppable force of empowered union stewards who embody leadership, resilience, and solidarity. Monthly Courses are on Zoom from 6-8PM on the dates below. You may RSVP for the course when you see the reminder and course description sent to your email or by clicking on the available course below:

Monthly Training Courses (below)

January 22: Meeting Link	Stewards in a Bargaining Year: This course gives a clear roadmap of what happens during a contract campaign and what stewards can do at the worksite to build and sustain power along the way. In this session, you’ll learn concrete tactics for sharing updates, fighting rumors, keeping coworkers engaged during a long fight, and helping members understand and enforce the contract once it’s settled.
February 19: Meeting Link	Steward Rights and Protections: This course is designed to empower stewards with a foundational understanding of their legal rights and responsibilities as agents of their union. Stewards will learn how to effectively represent their coworkers, understand critical retaliation protections, and recognize the importance of contract enforcement.
March 19: Meeting Link	Writing Grievances That Win (and Empower!): A grievance can be a request for a simple remedy or a complex pattern affecting multiple members. But a grievance is always a tool for you to empower the member you are representing. This training will equip stewards with the skill and confidence to write clear, contract-based grievances that are winnable, and to recognize grievance intake as an organizing moment to build relationships, surface collective issues, and identify emerging leaders.
April 16: Meeting Link	Finding and Growing Leaders at Your Worksite: It is a stewards’ role to identify other leaders in the worksite to grow our union, but do you know what to look for, or how to craft the right invitation to lead? This course will train stewards to recognize leadership potential in everyday members (especially those who don’t see themselves as leaders yet) and to practice inviting them to step up through small, affirming, low-barrier asks.
May 21: Meeting Link	Getting Ready to Face Management With Confidence: Whether you are preparing for an informal grievance meeting or rallying your co-workers for a march on the boss, facing management is always an opportunity to build power at your worksite… no matter how challenging it can feel. This course will offer guiding points and strategies to enter these meetings with clarity, calm, and confidence, knowing their rights, their role, and how to center themselves before and during the conversation.
June 18: Meeting Link	Tracking Growth: Your Worksite, Your Leadership, Your Campaign: It’s hard to improve what you can’t measure! This course will help union leaders understand why tracking growth matters—and to practice simple ways to set goals, measure progress, and reflect on development in their worksite, their own leadership, and the 2026 bargaining campaign (including CAT activity and membership trends).
July 16: Meeting Link	Understanding Power (So We Can Use It): Power mapping helps you stop guessing and start strategizing by identifying the real decision-makers at your worksite (and beyond) and the hidden connections that influence them. This course will help stewards learn how to “read” their worksite like a map—identifying formal positions, informal leaders, relationships, and leverage points—so we can organize strategy based on how power actually works, not how it’s supposed to work on paper.
August 20: Meeting Link	Communicating Union Wins and Losses: This training is designed to equip union stewards with the skills to effectively communicate the outcomes of grievances (both successful and unsuccessful) to their members. By analyzing the lessons learned from each grievance, participants will learn how to frame these conversations in a way that empowers members and fosters collective action, ultimately strengthening the union’s power and solidarity.
September 17: Meeting Link	Bargaining Starts at the Worksite: In this session, we will remind ourselves that contract bargaining isn’t just what happens at the negotiation table, it’s the power built through daily organizing at the worksite. This class teaches concrete actions members can take right now to strengthen the union’s hand in 2026 bargaining.
October 15: Meeting Link	Leading Against Workplace Bullying: This training aims to equip stewards with the knowledge and skills necessary to recognize, respond to, and address instances of bullying and harassment in the workplace. By learning how to navigate difficult conversations and advocate for respectful workplaces, stewards will be better prepared to organize and mobilize actions that promote work rights and well-being.
November 19: Meeting Link	How to Handle Pushback and Tough Questions: Confidence never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions. In this session, we will define a simple, repeatable framework for responding to management pushback, hostile questions, or tough conversations from coworkers, without freezing, getting defensive, or losing the thread of the issue.
December 17: Meeting Link	How Do YOU Empower: In this training, stewards will lead each other in guided discussions on effective worksite organizing techniques that they may already be using. Stewards will learn to recognize site specific priorities, understand the foundational elements of a successful workplace campaign, and engagement. Stewards will brainstorm together and workshop each other’s worksite organizing concerns, modeling empowerment in a safe space so they can empower their members back at the worksite.