Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Romola's avatar

1. I worked in legal aid for a number of years and cannot emphasize how important union organizing was to making that work sustainable. Having group solidarity about what we could reasonably take on, what wages were fair, and plans about how to take increasingly creative actions before hitting the point of a strike were really helpful. We never had to strike, and didn’t always get what we wanted from management, but we ensured certain basic protections for staff that ultimately made the work more sustainable for individuals and the org over the long run.

2. I like your earlier suggestion about compensation for caretakers as support we give for to people maintaining the social fabric. In terms of how we teach people to value that, I think that’s hard from a secular political perspective. I’ve often thought that a national year of service could be really helpful for this kind of thing — before college young adults would have to do some kind of military/CCC/AmeriCorps program. People really tend not to understand or value human vulnerability and interdependence until they’re in the thick of confronting it in person, and if they don’t get that through their community or faith they may just… not get it for a long time. Not saying it would fix everything, but placing young people in positions where they’ll encounter this stuff could at least be a start.

Expand full comment
K.'s avatar

I work for a public community college, so our union contract has a "no strike/no lockout" clause. It wasn't until that job that I'd heard the term "work to rule," but that's a one-step-below-striking labor tactic where you theoretically do *only* the list of responsibilities in your contract, no more - so for faculty, for instance, that looks like all the mechanics of prepping, teaching, and grading a class, but not (for example) checking your email outside of work hours; there's also a lot of voting to adjourn staff meetings right after they begin. It's very much not a perfect solution: there's a lot of disagreement about what to do about things that help students but are non-contractual work (for example, writing recommendation letters), a certain amount of feeling at my workplace that WTR benefits some union positions more than others (because of some differences in how the faculty and staff responsibilities break down), and I feel (though mine isn't a universal opinion) that WTR added to the damage and mistrust in the relationship between our faculty/staff and our management. But it can be a way to get people's attention, and it is the closest you can get to a strike if you can't legally strike. So that's a half-answer to your question, because I think there may well be a better model of organization than that; but it's the best I've actually *seen.*

Expand full comment
2 more comments...

No posts