Hundreds Of Union Members To March In 56th Inaugural Parade

From Change To Win In Washington, DC:

January 20th is going to be an historic day!

Oh, you think, I knew that. That’s when we’re going to be swearing in our first-ever African-American President of the United States!

That’s true, but it’s not the only reason why Tuesday will be historic.

What else is happening? For the first time in living memory, members of America’s labor movement have been asked to march in the official Inaugural Parade, that’s what.

Representing America’s workers will be 265 union members from across Change to Win, the AFL-CIO, and the National Education Association (NEA), along with a 17-by-24 foot float built entirely by union workers and driven by a Teamster. The float will feature the “faces of labor” — a tribute every hard-working man and woman who gets up every day and goes to work. (In the photo above, you can see the faces as they wait to be mounted on the float.)

January 20 will be the start of a new era for American workers, so it’s fitting that hundreds of them will be marching alongside President-Elect Barack Obama to mark the occasion!

How Are You Working For Change?

Registering voters. Volunteering at food banks. Phone banking for candidates. Organizing workers and improving working conditions. Raising money to fund research for important cures.

These are just a few of the things young workers are doing throughout the nation to make a differnce. With health care costs out of control, the economy a mess, rapidly rising gas prices, escalating college costs, the mortgage crisis, a broken immigration system...our nation needs all the help it can get.

This is a year for change if there ever was one. And hundreds of thousands of UFCW members will be working hard to send Barack Obama to the White House to make that change real.

But change doesn't start with the President or the people in Washington, as Senator Obama points out in his speeches.

Change starts with us. We can make a difference. We can help UFCW members, workers, and fellow Americans around the nation in times of trouble. We can oppose greedy CEOs and corporations, and fight for better wages, affordable, quality health care for all, improved working conditions, and the dignity of a secure retirement.

We can speak together and become more powerful. We can stick together and make our voices heard--and we can shout out for a real shot at the American Dream for each and every person in this country.

We can all be leaders. Young workers can and will lead the way to the change we need today.

How are you working for change? Tell us what you're doing to make this country a better place.

Why I Got Involved in My Union

This week's post is by guest blogger, Tamara Jones from UFCW Local 1116 in Duluth, MN. If you have a union story to share, contact youngworkers@ufcw.org

Seven years ago, when I started working in the nursing home, I didn’t really know what the union was about. I vaguely remembered reading the chapter in my high school social studies book about the Chinese railroad workers and some guy whose name I can barely recall wanting to make work safe for all workers. I just knew I had to belong and that it gave me health care, which I never thought I’d need. It also knew that because of my union, I got regular raises, which I thought was good.

Fast forward two years. A day shift in my department had come open at my job and I apparently had this thing called “seniority,” which meant I could have the day shift over other people in my department. I still wasn’t sure what it meant, but I thought it was cool that I could get the job that I wanted. However, one of my co-workers felt that she deserved to have the job, even though she'd been in the department less time. I didn’t know what to do. So I read my union contract, and then I talked to my union steward. I discovered that under my local union contract, Local 1116, I had “departmental seniority”, which meant that I got the job. I was really excited and started reading the contract more and more to find out what other rights I had as a union member and I started sharing this with my co-workers.

Pretty soon, people were coming to me and asking me questions about the contract. I would answer them as best as I could but I always said they should ask the union stewards. Eventually, I was asked if I would be interested in being a steward. I said that I’d be happy to help my co-workers out.

I had been a steward less than a week when I was asked to represent another steward who had gotten in trouble. I went in there really nervous, with my contract shaking in my hand. I listened to what the management had to say and I knew that they were wrong. I held up the contract and read the section that cleared my co-worker. I was told very firmly by our administrator that the job of the steward was to sit there and shut up. I looked at him and said “My job is to protect my co-worker. If you pursue this discipline, I will file a grievance.” I had taken my first step as an advocate for workers’ rights in the workplace, and we went on to file and win our grievance.

Throughout the years I worked as a steward, I found out that the best approach to solving problems was to find the common ground that both employer and employee had. In a nursing home, this was simple: what was best for our residents. From there, we had a starting point from which we could move forward and find solutions that benefited everyone. The employee did not always get what they wanted, and neither did the employer. We were always able to come to an agreement that both sides could live with and that, to me, was successful.