Sertus vs Unionware: An AI-First Alternative
Unionware is a comprehensive union management suite. Sertus is a grievance and collective agreement platform built AI-first — designed by the co-author of Canadian Labour Arbitration (Brown & Beatty).
Two different philosophies
Unionware has been serving unions for a long time. It is a broad platform covering membership, dues, accounting, communications, and grievances. For locals that want one vendor for everything, that breadth is the appeal. The trade-off is that grievances are one of many modules, and the grievance workflow reflects the traditions of general case management rather than the rhythms of a Canadian arbitration practice.
Sertus takes the opposite approach. Grievances and collective agreements are the product. The AI is trained on the patterns of Canadian arbitration — reading a collective agreement, linking articles to a grievance, assessing strengths and weaknesses, and drafting a first response that sounds like a business agent wrote it. Evidence uploaded to a case is read and summarised. Step letters, settlement drafts, and arbitration briefs all start from the case record automatically.
The result is a tool that does less but does it much faster. Teams report cutting first-draft time from four hours to twenty minutes on a typical case.
Where each tool fits
Grievance workflow
Sertus: Grievance-first. AI drafts responses and analyses cases against the collective agreement.
Unionware: One module in a broader suite. Primarily case tracking.
Collective agreement
Sertus: Parsed into structured articles with natural-language search.
Unionware: Stored as an attached document.
Membership and dues
Sertus: Not the focus.
Unionware: Core strength. Full membership lifecycle covered.
Implementation time
Sertus: Days, not weeks. Agreements parse on upload.
Unionware: Long rollouts, typical of enterprise suites.
Bilingual support
Sertus: Parses English and French agreements natively.
Unionware: Varies by deployment.
AI assistance
Sertus: Core. Every case screen is AI-assisted.
Unionware: Limited.
When to pick Sertus
Pick Sertus if the grievance caseload is where your team spends the most time and where mistakes are most expensive. Pick Sertus if collective agreement analysis is a bottleneck, if step-letter drafting is slow, or if arbitration preparation lives in a folder of Word documents instead of a searchable workspace. Related reading: grievance management and union management software comparison.
Last updated: April 2026
Book a Sertus walkthrough
Thirty minutes to see Sertus read one of your collective agreements and assess a real grievance.
Request a Demo