When I signed my little blue union card, I didn’t fully understand what I was committing to. I went to graduate school because I wanted to be a professor. But academia was broken, especially at big, private research universities–especially rich ones in poor cities like New Haven. It was clear that the people who did the actual work in the classroom needed more power.
I quickly learned that organizing this union wasn’t going to be easy. Everyone remembered the last union drive when workers went on strike and people were fired or blacklisted. In the intervening years, healthcare benefits improved, pay was low, but seemed bearable, and this being Yale, many of us felt like we had won the lottery.
It was a different time, too. Starbucks and Amazon workers weren’t organizing unions. Academic workers and journalists weren’t winning unions. Most of my colleagues didn’t know a union member. They thought unions were for factory workers or construction workers, not for them.
The first time my organizer asked me to come to a meeting, I hesitated. I had plans to see a movie that night. I loved movies; I still do. I was a graduate student. I had nothing but time. In retrospect, it sounds silly: see a film or help change your life and the lives of your coworkers? The first option was obviously attractive, the second one was less obvious and even scary. I decided to go to the meeting instead of the movie. Without knowing it, I was answering Hillel’s question: If not now, when? And it has made all the difference.
Aaron Greenberg works in the labor movement and lives in Los Angeles. www.facebook.com/aarongreenb
For Every Jewel There is a Question:
In the past year, how have your actions resulted in little wins?
