Video: Connection, not division

Last Monday, I started a new job as the political director for IBEW 569, a local electrical workers' union based here in San Diego. In talking to friends about what I’m doing–while learning, fast, in real time, how to do the job myself–it occurred to me that there’s actually quite a knowledge gap in society today regarding an understanding of what unions are and what they’re supposed to do. So let’s get into it.

A union is, at its core, a group of workers who agree to negotiate together instead of alone. One worker asking a boss for a raise has almost no leverage. A thousand workers asking together hits different. That leverage of teamwork, that collective bargaining, is how the overtime pay, workplace safety standards, and employer-sponsored health insurance all came to exist in this country. None of it was handed down out of corporate goodwill. Fair wages (bread) and dignity (roses) were won, often at real cost. In 1890, the average workweek for manufacturing employees and building tradesmen was around 100 hours or more. Workers in Chicago who rallied for an eight-hour workday faced police violence, but we have that and weekends now because people were willing to lose their jobs, and sometimes their lives, to organize for it.