Perpetual Pergatory

You know what I love about meeting up with my fellow unionists? It's being constantly told that no matter what I do in my job, no matter how well things turn out here at local 3544, no matter how many of our members go on to jobs in labor, I will never be considered successful because of the way we do our membership drives. Everything is tainted, from bargaining to affecting change at the state fed, none of it matters because we don't go knocking on doors to achieve 75% membership. One hundred and twenty-five people at a GMM? Doesn't count. 22% raises over the last 6 years? Useless. (In fact, because the GTFF has not hit the streets in that time, our results should not actually be possible because bargaining is only won "on the streets." That I haven't led the GTFF out on strike means that I haven't actually achieved anything.) I could go on, but you get the drift.

Again, nothing lifts the spirits like being (effectively) told that nothing I do in my job will help advance my career in the labor movement, as no one considers what I do now to be "organizing," and if I'm not organizing, I am not part of the labor movement.

UPDATE: In another boost to my ego, I was eating lunch when a union-supportive professor asked me how bargaining was going. I told him it wasn't going very well. He started ranting about how much the UO administration sucked. He then asked who did our negotiating, if we had a lawyer. I told him that I was the lead negotiator and GTFs made up the rest of the team. He scowled and asked if we were affiliated with anybody. I said AFT. He brightened, "Oh, AFT. I wonder if Shanker is still around? You should get AFT to send a lawyer out here who could sit down with the UO and say, 'Look, I've done this thousands of times and your offers are crap and we're not going to accept them.'" I just nodded along. Later in the conversation, my mild attempt to assert that I knew what I was doing was rejected in favor of a return to the lawyer idea.