Sertus vs Union.dev: Grievance-First for Canadian Locals
Union.dev (Union OS) is a modern union operations platform. Sertus is the platform for the work that determines arbitration outcomes — grievance caseloads, collective agreement analysis, and AI case assessment. Built by the co-author of Canadian Labour Arbitration(Brown & Beatty).
General-purpose union software vs. grievance-first software
Union.dev built a modern suite for the broader work of running a union — membership, dues, communications, organizing, with grievance tracking as one module among many. For a local that wants a single platform across its operations, that breadth is the point. Many locals on legacy tools have moved to it for the user experience alone.
Sertus starts from the opposite end. Grievances are the product. Every workflow, model, and view is designed around the grievance lifecycle — intake, investigation, step meetings, arbitration preparation, and settlement. When a business agent opens a new file, Sertus reads the collective agreement, surfaces the articles in play, extracts facts from the uploaded evidence, and drafts a first response that the agent can edit rather than write from scratch.
The two approaches coexist comfortably. Many locals keep a lightweight membership tool and run Sertus for the grievance caseload, because that is where the AI advantage compounds. The decision is rarely all-or-nothing.
Where each platform is strongest
Grievance caseload
Sertus: Purpose-built. AI reads the collective agreement, extracts facts, drafts step letters, and surfaces precedents.
Union.dev: Tracked as cases inside a broader union operations suite.
Collective agreement intelligence
Sertus: Natural language search across parsed articles — surfaces relevant clauses in three clicks. Bilingual support.
Union.dev: Agreements stored as attachments.
Arbitration preparation
Sertus: Generates argument outlines, evidence briefs, and precedent matches from the case record.
Union.dev: Manual — lives in external documents.
Union operations breadth
Sertus: Focused on grievances, complaints, and arbitration. Not a membership tool.
Union.dev: Strong. Membership, dues, comms, organizing, plus grievance tracking.
Canadian labour law
Sertus: Provincial legislation, Canadian arbitration practice, and bilingual support built in. Data hosted in Canada.
Union.dev: US-based and US-focused. Canadian customers adapt to the product.
AI assistance
Sertus: Core to every workflow.
Union.dev: Limited AI in the grievance module. The product is general-purpose.
Built for Canadian arbitration practice
Sertus is built by the co-author of Canadian Labour Arbitration — the reference text Canadian arbitrators cite. That authorship shapes how the platform treats every case: collective agreement provisions anchor the analysis, and arbitration standards are the bar the AI drafts are held against. See related pages on grievance tracking software and grievance management.
Last updated: May 2026
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