Member Perspectives: #HotLaborSummer [Part 1]
In our Member Perspectives series, we ask our members to write about their union experiences. In Part 1 of this 4 part series, Jimmy Brancho shares their key takeaways from the 2022 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago.
Jimmy Brancho with fellow lecturer Diane Aretz debriefing a day of workshops in their matching LaborNotes Troublemaker swag.
Jimmy Brancho
Ann Arbor | Sweetland Writing Center | Lecturer IV
This trip was my first time at LaborNotes or at a labor conference of any kind, and I had no idea what I was about to see. My whole idea of a “conference” - top-down, stuffy, procedural, quiet, distant - is antithetical to my experience of union work.
What it actually looked like was hundreds of union activists from all industries - transit workers, skilled trades, and educators. The energy coming from the transit workers in particular was different. In higher ed I think it’s easy to get wrapped up in the culture of collegiality which looks down on workers advocating for themselves. I remember a few moments from transit workers, particularly a rank-and-file caucus for Chicago transit workers, where their sense of purpose and justice was so incredibly clear. “We’re the ones driving the bus. We’re the ones helping people. You’d better give us what we need.” For me, just being near that energy strengthened my resolve as an education unionist, and I’ve been revisiting it whenever I start to doubt the work we do as a union and whether we’re being unreasonable or greedy.
The LaborNotes approach to union activism starts and ends with member power - bottom-up organizing that thrives on interconnected relationships, mutual trust and purpose, and the readiness to lay it on the line for one another. It’s not easy. There are emotional ups and downs, and coming to a real consensus across a large and diverse body is inherently difficult. Across the sessions I attended, I heard stories of frustration and demoralization when the constant discouragement and “preemptive de-escalation,” (to put it politely), from management penetrated into the union members’ minds and threw water on the movement. But again, seeing transit workers and dock workers and K-12 teachers and even undergraduate student unionists pissed off and doing something about it together - and winning - sent me back from Chicago with a brand new mindset.
This June, LEO was able to send four members to the 2022 LaborNotes Conference in Chicago, Illinois. The conference broke attendance records, with 4,000 attendees and a live-streamed component, and featured over 100 meetings and workshops. For more information about Labor Notes, visit: https://labornotes.org/