Glossary

The words Candoa uses and what they mean.

Bargaining unit: the group of workers at an employer that the contract covers, members and non-members alike.
Business agent: a staff member of the local who services contracts and works grievances. Some locals say representative or rep.
Bumping: a senior worker displacing a junior one during a layoff, as the contract allows.
Contract: the collective bargaining agreement between the local and an employer.
Employer roster: the list an employer sends of who works in the bargaining unit. The Rosters add-on checks it against your members. Not the same as your own member roster.
Dues check-off: the member's authorization for the employer to deduct dues from pay and send them to the local.
Just cause: the standard most contracts require for discipline; a discipline grievance argues it wasn't met.
Arbitration: the last step of a grievance procedure, where an outside arbitrator decides.
Local: your union local, the workspace everything belongs to. One account can belong to several.
Owner: the person who created the local. Can do everything, including switching add-ons on and billing.
Permission: what a staff account may do: Owner, Admin, Agent, Staff, Steward, or Read-only. See Permissions.
Access limit: a restriction on a staff account to chosen employers and worksites. Everything outside them is hidden.
Propose: what stewards and treasurers do instead of editing. The change waits in Approvals.
Member number: the local's own number for a member. Former numbers keep working after a change.
Status: Active, On leave, Retired, Withdrawn, Suspended, or Non-member. Members are never deleted; they change status.
Non-member: someone in the bargaining unit who hasn't joined. On the roster, not counted as a member.
Primary employment: the job the roster, filters, and counts show when a member has more than one.
Worksite: one store, plant, or office of an employer.
Steward: a member who serves as steward at an employer or worksite. Recorded on the employer's page.
Position: an office or seat in the local: officer, executive board, trustee, committee, delegate.
Join: a person filling in the membership form and signing the consents. Taken on a staff device, from a public link, from a personal link, or from a paper card. Also the name of the add-on that does this; without it, staff add members by hand or from a spreadsheet.
Consent: a document a member reads and signs when joining, such as the dues check-off authorization.
Document: either a record's own paperwork, kept on its Documents tab and seen only there, or one the local publishes from Settings › Documents for the whole local, one employer, or one worksite, which shows in the From the library section of the Documents tab on every record under the place it belongs to.
Approvals: the screen where proposed changes and join applications wait for an owner or admin.
Saved view: a named set of filters, columns, and sort on a list, private or shared with the office.
Custom field: a field your local added to members or employers.
Tag: a word stuck on a member or employer to find them again.
Activity: the timeline on a member, employer, or worksite: everything that happened to the record, in order, written by the events themselves.
Contact: a call, visit, email, or meeting logged as a note on a record. The latest one is the record's Last contacted date; a plain note isn't a contact.
Last contacted: when the local last reached a member; for a worksite or employer, the latest contact on it or on anyone who works there.
Add-on: a part of Candoa a local switches on and pays for, such as Grievances.
Grievant: the member a grievance is filed for. Several grievants make a class grievance.
Procedure: the ordered steps a grievance moves through, with days allowed at each.
Step: one stage of a procedure. A case is always at one step until it closes.
Business agent: the staff member responsible for a grievance.
Master agreement: a contract signed by one employer that also covers others.
Command palette: the search and action box opened with Cmd+K.

These pages are the help for Candoa, the software a local runs its members, employers, and grievances on.

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Updated 2026-09-19