Workers’ Education and Rights Collective (WERC) – Platform Infrastructure & Data Residency

The Workers’ Education and Rights Collective (WERC) is an Ottawa-based organization that helps workers understand and exercise their labour, employment, human, and environmental rights through legal education, information, and support. WERC focuses on vulnerable and marginalized workers, including low-income workers, Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, people with disabilities, and youth entering the workforce. It serves workers in Ottawa and federally regulated workers and complainants across Canada, promoting access to justice, equity, inclusion, and community empowerment.

WERC uses Members Village as its membership and website management software. Canadian data residency, technology security protocols, and database access controls supporting WERC's online services are detailed below.

Active Modules & Deployed Workflows

WERC's implementation runs on a dedicated multi-tenant SaaS and isolated database architecture configured for non-profit and community legal education member-based organizations. Modules include, but are not limited to:

• Membership: Self-serve applications and renewals for individual memberships.
• Payments: Credit card payments routed through a secure and PCI-compliant payment gateway.
• Member Portal: Self-serve portal with profile edit controls and financial history.
• Website: Management of a responsive website including public and members-only content.
• Events: Management of paid and free fundraising and educational events.
• Forms: Secure form builder for data intake workflows such as member detail collection.
• Email Communications: Regular email campaigns and newsletters sent through a CASL-compliant module.
• Digital Manuals: Publishing portal for digital manuals and reference guides such as the Canadian Human Rights Act.
• Articles: Curated listing of news posts specializing in workers' rights.

Privacy Frameworks & Administrative Boundaries

WERC maintains exclusive ownership of all member, organization, and registrant records. The platform enforces controls aligned with the following privacy mandates:

• CASL: Subscriber opt-outs with automated propagation, and self-service email communication portal.
• Cookie Policy: Granular opt-in controls and consent management categorized by functional and analytical cookie types.

Core Infrastructure

Infrastructure operations adhere to the following protocols:

1. Data Residency:
   Primary databases, container clusters, and automated snapshots reside exclusively in Canadian data centers (Toronto, ON).
2. Network & Storage Encryption:
   Enforced HTTPS (TLS 1.3/1.2) in transit; AES-256 data encryption at rest.
3. Access Controls:
   Zero-trust architecture with MFA and SSH key authentication restricted to authorized system engineers.

Third-Party Integrations: Where Workers’ Education and Rights Collective (WERC) enables specialized external tools (e.g. embedded video streaming), data processed by those specific tools is subject to their agreements.

Governance & Inquiries

• For Data Records & Policy Requests:
  To update credentials, adjust communication preferences, or submit a formal data access inquiry, contact the Workers’ Education and Rights Collective (WERC) Office directly.
• For Infrastructure & Platform Support:
  Operational incident logs and system architecture inquiries are coordinated between Workers’ Education and Rights Collective (WERC) administration and the technical team at Members Village.