Lawrie Cherniack  is an experienced mediator who specializes in workplace conflicts. He has over 30 years of experience in the workplace field.

Education: educated at Carleton College in Minnesota (B.A. in English and Philosophy), the University of Chicago (M.A. in English), the University of Manitoba (LL.B.), and trained at Mediation Services in Winnipeg (Certificate in Conflict Resolution Specializing in Mediation), Lawrie has spent his entire career in dealing with, and resolving, conflicts.

Training Experience: He has created and taught courses across Canada in negotiation, strategy, labour law, advocacy, and conflict resolution to managers, unions, law students, and lawyers for, among others,  the Human Resource Management Association of Manitoba, the Faculty of Law and Executive Outreach of Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, TEC (The Executive Council), the Labour Relations Institute of Canada, and the ADR Institutes of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Community Involvement: He has also been heavily involved in his home community of Winnipeg. He served in the early 1970s as a City Councillor, chaired the City of Winnipeg Act Review Committee and the Board of Mediation Services, has served as vice-chair of the Manitoba Labour Board and the Manitoba Human Rights Commission, served on the boards of numerous community organizations, including The Manitoba Museum, the Winnipeg Airports Authority, Health Sciences Centre, Manitoba Association of Social Workers/Manitoba Institute of Registered Social Workers, and the ADR Institute of Manitoba.

Work Experience: Lawrie was an employment and labour lawyer for over 30 years, while also doing mediations and arbitrations. In January of 2007 he left his advocacy practice and has concentrated exclusively on neutral conflict resolution, most relevantly, on conflicts in the workplace.

The Need for Trust: Because conflict in the workplace involves employees who will have an ongoing relationship with each other, mediation to resolve that conflict cannot be the simple give-and-take mediation common to employment and labour law. Unlike many kinds of conflict resolution, where persons in conflict can agree on a set of compromises to resolve legal disputes, workplace conflict resolution must result in a change in employees’ attitudes and their abilities to communicate and to listen.

To accomplish that requires trust in the person brought in to resolve the conflicts. Lawrie inspires that trust, not simply because of his own attitudes, training, experience, personal qualities, and skills, but also because in his over 30 years of acting as a labour and employment lawyer, he acted exclusively as a lawyer for employees, ranging from Presidents and Chief Executive Officers to managers to supervisors to trades and to unskilled labourers.

Employees can have confidence that if he has been hired to resolve conflicts, that is exactly what he will to do. He will not support one side of an employee conflict over another; he will work with all sides to help them find a resolution to their conflict. Within the labour relations community of Manitoba, he has developed a reputation for integrity and principles.

The Workplace Ombudsman gives Lawrie the opportunity to broaden and deepen the range of services he provides. Now problems that would normally fester until something serious happened can be dealt with at an earlier stage. Employees can be coached to talk things out rather than bottle up their resentments. Misunderstandings can be cleared up before they multiply exponentially.

Who is The Workplace Ombudsman?