 Hi everyone, we're going to give it a few minutes for folks to join. So we're just going to give it another minute. Welcome everyone. All right. Well, we're going to get started. Welcome everyone to the Labor Notes webinar on organizing in OpenShop America. This is the second in a new monthly series of webinars we're going to be doing. The next one is Tuesday, December 11th, and it's a Q&A with workers involved in some of the biggest campaigns of 2018. I'm Samantha Winslow, the co-director of Labor Notes, and for those of you joining us who are new to Labor Notes, we're a media and education project. We run a magazine and news site about what's happening around the country, issues that affect workers, successful campaigns, we write and sell books about organizing and running effective unions and campaigns, and we have trainings and conferences covering nuts and bolts topics like assertive grievance handling. We also share strategies around topics like community labor alliances. We have a special issue, Rebuilding Power in OpenShop America, that is for sale on our website if you want to order copies for your work site or your local, and we're so excited that all of you have joined this webinar to hear from union activists and leaders about the organizing principles and practical steps behind success, organizing and fighting for building strong unions and fighting for good working conditions and fighting for our communities, even in an OpenShop environment. So, before we hear from our presenters, Patrick Green from the Nashville Transit Union, Amy Missialko from the Milwaukee Teachers Union, and Georgia Flowers League from the LA Teachers Union, I wanted to give a little background on right to work, where it is, what its origins are, and what it looks like around the country. And then we'll hear from the presenters on how to organize within an OpenShop environment, and then we can take some questions from all of you. So, right to work became a national reality in the public sector when the Supreme Court took the Janus case and decided in June of this year that membership must be optional for union employees in the public sector, and that unions could not require non-members to pay the agency fee or equivalent fee to cover representation or bargaining even though they get the benefits of the union contract. So we knew this was coming, right? Many of you remember two years ago when Supreme Court Justice Scalia died, and the Supreme Court lost its conservative majority, unions got another two years to prepare. And this time, Mark Janus, the plaintiff, didn't just take his case to the Supreme Court on his own dime, right? He was the front for a concerted effort by pro-business, anti-union organizations such as the National Right to Work Foundation. And they've been using every possible channel to chip away at unions and union rights. We know that the corporate millionaires and billionaires are looking for ways to weaken unions at every level, including the bargaining table, state level, and in the courts. But right to work laws actually started in the private sector in the 1940s as a strategy to maintain Jim Crow in the South. Corporate and white supremacist forces pushed right to work laws to keep black and white workers from joining unions together. State by state, right to work has spread to 28 states. It originated in the South, but it's recently swept into the Midwest in public and private sectors recently in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa, although some states beat it back, Ohio and Missouri. So in states where right to work was pushed through for public sector workers, it's often paired with restrictions to public, to collective bargaining. Today in Wisconsin, we can celebrate that Scott Walker got voted out, but he left behind Act 10, which was passed in 2011, and which all but outlaws collected bargaining, bans juice deduction, and makes workers recertify their union every year. We'll hear more about what it's like from Amy in a few minutes. And Iowa has similar restrictions. Anti-union forces use the language of individual choice and freedom, but what they're really after is what gives unions the potential to be powerful. Organize people and organize money. They want to keep unions from raising money and from uniting workers. And there's a reason public sector workers are a target, particularly teachers unions. Union membership overall is down to 11%, but it's five times higher in the public sector, 34% versus six and a half percent. Teachers are the most unionized profession, and the country's largest union is the National Education Association. And public sector workers are majority women, and a high percentage of people of color, particularly African American women. So these are just reasons why the public sector is such a target for these kinds of attacks on good middle class jobs. So going after union shop and collective bargaining is a very serious attack, but it's just one of many attacks on workers. In the public sector, we've seen membership shrink because lawmakers have privatized slash budgets and laid off workers, particularly after the 2008 economic crisis. So in both the public and private sector, employers are happy to have as few people doing as much work as possible. Having a high membership percentage can't be separated from these bigger fights around funding and staffing. And while unions were preparing for the Janus ruling, anti-union forces were also preparing for the opportunity to further weaken unions. The state policy network, a network of free market think tanks, including the Freedom Foundation, they've been running an opt out campaign across the country with ads, robocalls, social media, postcards, mailings to union members, and even knocking on doors. And we'll hear from Georgia and LA about what that's looked like and how unions are tracking the members about it. So while we know all the ways that right to work, some people call it right to shirk, right to work for less, why it's bad, we also have to acknowledge that part of the danger is that it exposes union's weaknesses. Unions have often relied on technical solutions, making it difficult to drop membership easier to collect dues rather than engaging with and involving members. In fact, in response to Janus, many unions continue to look for technical solutions. In New York State, unions worked with Cuomo to pass legislation that would allow unions to not represent non-members. And many unions are beefing up their drop windows, creating shorter periods of time where people can drop their membership. Now we're gonna hear varying perspectives on this call about these topics. So I'm not saying that one way is correct, but these are not where unions' main focus should be. Legislation can change and many of these efforts can be upended by court challenges. So relying on legal or technical solutions, rather than strengthening our internal organization, it leaves us vulnerable to more attacks. The presenters are also gonna talk about not just how to counter anti-union messages and how to keep members from dropping, but more how to inspire members to wanna be involved and stay involved in building powerful unions for the public good. So for folks just joining, I'm Samantha from Labor Notes. We're live streaming this on Facebook. So if you go to our Facebook page, you can see it there, you can share it with your friends. And the conversation will be saved there as well for future viewings. So now we're gonna hear from Georgia Leaf Flowers from the LA Teachers Union, Patrick Green from the Nashville Bus Drivers Union, and Amy Mizzalco from the Milwaukee Teachers Union about how they approach organizing in OpenShop America. So I thought we could start by hearing from each of you tell us a little bit about your sector, your union, your workforce, what the rights are, what the union rights, what the laws are, and then tell us what was your local like in the past and how did you assess what you needed to do to be successful in an OpenShop environment. Let's start with Georgia, then Patrick, then Amy. Okay, so I belong to United Teachers Los Angeles which is the largest local in California. We have approximately 34,000 members where a very urban union or members primarily are teachers within LA Unified, the Los Angeles Unified School District, but we've also worked to unionize some of the charter schools in Los Angeles. So some of our members teach at charters. We are, as I said, we are now up to 34,000 members which is about 15,000 more than we had when the Janus decision came down. So we've actually increased our membership. And we are primarily female force, fairly diverse, but representative of our location. And so Georgia, before we move on, let me ask you something about how you were gonna get ready for the Janus decision, what did you think about? We focused on individual conversations with members. So the big campaign of what does your union do for you? But in order to make sure that our members got that message, we had our leadership went out and hit up school sites. We've got about 900 schools in LA Unified. Ooh, I'm sorry. They spoke to the members at those sites. On average, each elected was hitting maybe three school sites per day and having conversations in groups. We also had an all chapter chair meeting where as many chapter chairs as we had, and we now have 864 sites that have chapter chairs, which again is the largest number that we've had since our union's inception. So we had an all chapter chair meeting. Leadership could speak directly to the chapter chairs so that our message could be unified and uniform. And they were charged with going back to their sites and getting that message across to the membership and communication. So we have our communication department has done a phenomenal job of making sure that individual members get information not only from their site group, but also directly from, we refer to it as big UTLA. So there are email blasts that go out every week or website has been updated so that members can go on, they can find information about campaigns, about issues. They can fill out a membership card if you haven't done it or for whatever reason you need to redo it, you could actually do it online. You can find information about so many different things on the website. And so that just makes the union much more accessible to its membership. You can plug in and you can get what you need and you can reach out. If there's something critical, something you need to do in a hurry, you can reach someone. Thanks Georgia. Patrick, do you wanna tell us about what things are like at your local and kind of when you got involved, what the things look like and how did you think about what needed to be done to turn things around? Absolutely. So a little bit of background on our local. We are a transit union local with 530, what we call bargaining unit members because Tennessee is a right to work state. It's been a right to work state my entire life. So that's kind of all I've ever known is right to work. So it makes it a little bit easier for me to operate because we understand just what it's like. So out of those 530 employees here at the system, we represent 460 of them. Basically the jobs that we do, we are bus operators, maintenance employees, janitors, custodians, and bus cleaners, fuelers. So we have multiple jobs that are out there. With Tennessee being a right to work state, we believe that it challenges us to be more service oriented as a union. And our local was not designed that way. So we had zero stewards. So all we had were elected officers. No one attended union meetings. They would go months without a quorum. So we literally had an executive board that ran rough shot over our entire union. Zero participation from membership. And if you did participate, it was viewed as you were a threat to the leadership. You were challenging them. No new ideas. The only way you could get elected is if you were 20 to 25 years in and you were close to retirement. Which is really unfortunate because that means no new ideas. We don't adapt to changes. So we were fortunate enough, speaking of myself and my current executive board, we were fortunate enough to have a president retire in the middle of his term. During that time, we were in a contract negotiation. There were some things that a lot of us wanted to see that wasn't happening. And so the only way we could ensure that we saw the changes that were needed was to take the office. I'm a firm believer that you work hard and you will be rewarded. But sometimes you can work hard and never be rewarded. So you got to take it. And so we decided that we were gonna take the union leadership. We were successful at taking the leadership. And the reason we were able to do that was because of the new ideas. We did things. And remember I'm saying we have to be at least here in the South, a service-oriented union. So that means we have to meet the needs of our membership and not determine for ourselves what the needs of our membership actually is. And so in that, we were able to talk the other candidates into going into town hall style debates. Well, what we discovered was that we weren't listening as a union to our members. And when we began to listen to our members, we could then determine what direction we needed to go. Of course, we assessed the union before we took office and we felt like we knew what our membership needed. But when we actually began to sit down and talk to our membership, to talk to the families of our membership, we had no idea the true direction that we were going. And so that was critical for us because we had to engage our actual membership. And so I firmly believe that here in the South, if you don't do that, there's no way you can be successful. Thanks, Patrick. And Amy, do you wanna tell us a little bit about Milwaukee? Sure. I'm Amy Missioko. I'm a 27 year special education teacher in Milwaukee public schools and I'm currently on release to our union as president. And the landscape in Milwaukee, this is a highly hyper privatized environment. Only 56% of children in our city attend public schools. So that's about 76,000 students. Milwaukee is the home of the private voucher experiments. And so we have led a significant number of students and families away to unaccountable private and many times failing voucher and charter schools, some of which pick up and leave our students and families in the middle of the school year. When Act 10 was unleashed by Scott Walker in February of 2011, I'll just say that as a teacher at that time, I had no idea the far reaching ramifications that Act 10 would hold for our students and for public education workers in Milwaukee. As Sam mentioned earlier, like I've heard some people say that Act 10 is right to work on steroids. It was meant to bust the unions. It was meant to clear the path for even more privatization across the state. It took away our right to collectively bargain except for one thing, which is cost of living. And there's no dues deduction and it requires us to go through an annual recertification vote every single year. We're actually still in our annual recertification vote window right now to just have the right to remain recognized as a union. And we have to hit that threshold by 51% plus one every single year. And I would just say that our union prior to Act 10 was really a traditional staff, dominated kind of business union that was based on enforcement of the contract and kind of a transactional organization. And I can tell you that I never ever thought I would be the president of my union under any circumstance. But what happened with Act 10 and what was at risk for our students and for my profession that I love and my fellow workers was so significant that I had no choice but to become involved with thousands of fellow members and it's really been an eight year long nonstop campaign of resistance. So we've been able to maintain about 70% membership in our teacher unit. We've been able to maintain about 51% membership in our educational assistant union unit. So we have about 4,850 members right now and to cross over into the new world of what a new union for MTEA would look like meant going beyond bread and butter wages and benefits which we will never stop doing as a union, it's imperative but it also meant that we were gonna do fundamental work in leading our profession, defending our profession and that we were committed to social justice in our classrooms and social justice in our communities and that we would stand with families and students for greater causes in our community. And I think that I'll just conclude by saying that at a time when I lost that first year we went off contract, I lost about $10,000 that year in combined wages and benefits and that was significant. Like the first day I looked at my pay stub, I cried. I'll never forget that. And so to go door to door and ask people to continue to make a $1,000 per year commitment and investment in their union, it was a big deal to ask people to do that. But enough people believed that we could still be powerful and that we could still fight and win without a contract and without collective bargaining. And here we sit nine days later after firing Scott Walker. So. I think we can all wave goodbye to Scott Walker. Yeah, we can. Bye bye. There might be other hand gestures. Yeah, hit the road. So, well, thanks all of you. So now I wanna hear a little bit about how does membership and keeping membership up fit into the bigger work of the union? How do you connect worksite issues with being a member? And how did you approach growing membership in the states that have already been right to work? And for Georgia in California, how did you approach making the changes to keep members after Janice? So, Georgia, do you wanna start? Sure. So, we really prepared our membership for Janice. We talked about it constantly, let people know it was coming, that we could not count on another death on the high court to save us. This was going to happen. And we, again, our leadership engaged with members. And when I say leadership, I don't mean just the electors. I mean, you know, or board of directors, people who are in our house of reps and our site reps made it a point to talk to our members and make sure that they were engaged, that they felt connected. If there was something happening that made them question, then we really, we tried to work that out. But also, we were very proactive. So, we had an anticipation of opt-out campaigns. We, or leadership, decided to have our membership cards redesigned so that we would minimize legal exposure in terms of, you know, if the decision comes down and someone decides to drop, you know, what is our liability there? If, you know, we knew it was gonna take the district a bit of time to adjust their systems to stop, to stop collecting dues or whatever else needed to happen. And so, that card was designed and then we undertook an aggressive all-in campaign to get members to recommit to the union. So, again, it was leadership going out to school sites and talking to people, our reps, the union employees, going out and visiting sites. But it was also the underground, the school site leadership that made it a point to track down every member on their site to talk to them, to get them to sign that card. We also, our union built a database and it is updated constantly, but that information also is returned to our school sites constantly. So that on a monthly basis or school sites or chapter chairs who are our school site reps get an updated roster that tracks who has signed the recommit card. You know, what is their status? Is everybody on your site a member? And we celebrate at our area meetings which are generally about every four weeks. We celebrate when a school has 100% recommit on the cards, when everyone on the site is a member. When, you know, we have our political action fund, campaign to make sure that people understood why that was necessary, the difference between their views and political contributions, what political contributions were used for. So it was really sharing information very concisely with our membership so that they knew and understood why this was happening and our plan for dealing with it and getting our membership on board with that plan. And at this point, almost 80% of our members have signed the recommit and in terms of active drops, the last number I got was about 30. And this is, you know, from a membership of over 30,000. So again, talking to people about not just the butter of our union, you know, wages and benefits, which are important, that's the reason we get up and go to work, but also the sort of intangibles, you know, we are a family, we are here to support you. We design so that our members also have greater access to legal services or a part of the group legal service plan. You know, to the very minute things, you can use your union card to get a discount or, you know, whatever, restaurants and amusement parks and that kind of thing. So, and in terms of, so that was getting current members to recommit, but we are also establishing a presence with new members. So as orientations when the district hires new teachers, someone is there from UTLA to make sure that we talk to them and get them signed up ASAP. Thanks, Georgia. So Patrick, do you wanna talk about how you connect membership to the larger work of the union and then how are you thinking about growing, how have you approached growing membership and you had some success in that, right? Absolutely, so we had to begin by organizing from the inside out, right? So because we had a very low membership as it related to the number of employees at the system and then those employees not being engaged, we immediately had to go out and get a win. And so one of the things that we did here at our transit system here in Nashville, we had a contract and the previous contract before me, they decided to go up on our health insurance premiums by $50 a month. But they immediately, in inserting that language, also inserted language that said that if you take part in our health and wellness program, we will lower your premium by $50 a month. And so I was one of the people that objected to it. And the reason for that was because they wanted things to be done such as blood work, a battery of tests and these were tests that went on for weeks. You had to attend several training seminars on weekends and I thought that it was absolutely ridiculous that we had to do that. And so I immediately targeted that program when I took office. And while there was a small number of us who did not participate, I was able to force the company to refund the money that we had all paid. And so words spread fairly quickly and people began to look and say, this union's actually looking to work, right? They're looking to do a lot of really good things. And we celebrate every success we have, we're honest with every failure that we have with the nugget that we get up every day with the intent to do better, right? And so those things coupled with just a lot of luck. I'm a firm believer in luck, but the definition of luck for me is when preparation meets opportunity. So we would do things like we had an election because we had a steward that resigned and took another job. And so we did things like gave our members lapel pens for coming to vote. Believe it or not, those lapel pens actually kind of went viral here in the workplace. People began to post Instagram pictures of themselves near the voting booth with their union lapel pen or they would post on Facebook and Snapchat. And so we began to build union pride. And so once you do that and you get your membership excited because I'm a passionate person. I'm an introvert by trade, but I'm very passionate. And I think each of us here can honestly say we couldn't do what we do effectively if we didn't genuinely love the work and the membership that we represent. And so it was kind of like a tidal wave in getting people who are already in the workplace to join. In terms of new employees and we've experienced quite a bit of growth in the last couple of years here in Nashville. They call us the it city, I guess. And so yeah, so what we began to do was we began to institute programs to indoctrinate employees here in the system. And so what I mean by that is some of the things that we would do is because we had no stewards so we had to build a steward program and bring on stewards. So one of the requirements if you were going to be a steward was you had to be a mentor trainer. So at our bus system, you spend two weeks in the classroom and then we put you out on the road. Our training department is not large enough to put actual administrative trainers on the buses so they ride with drivers. And so those drivers have to be signed up to be mentors. Almost every single mentor out there is one of our union stewards, is one of our activists. So you're gonna spend two to four weeks on the bus with me and I'm going to talk to you about how wonderful our union is, how much we care about you, how much we have your best interests at heart. You're going to find out every single activity that we have going on. And so we genuinely blitz any new employee that comes in. Twice a year here at our transit system, we select new routes. So you have the opportunity to switch the bus route that you're actually driving. That is also a time for us because those are the two times of the year when we know where every single employee is going to be, where you're gonna be. We know what time you're going to be there and we're there to meet you, right? So we're there and we're specifically looking for you. And so we have recruiters and organizers in-house. We set up tables and it is a recruiting drive. We have t-shirts, we have lapel pants, we have cookies, we have drinks and the entire purpose is to go get that person who is not a member of the union. We were very successful. Now remember, we're a small local but the first time we did it, we gained 26 new members on the first day. And we put in effectively about four hours worth of work. Thanks, Patrick. So what I'm hearing from both Patrick and Georgia is that it's about having lots of conversations with members and potential members. It's about keeping track of those conversations, knowing where to find people and putting in that extra effort to find people, especially harder to reach or new employees. Amy, I'm gonna ask you the same question if you could talk a little bit about how membership fits into the bigger, larger work of the union. But we actually got a question in. I wanna encourage people to add more questions to the Q and A or to the chat. But I think this relates to our question. So one of our listeners asked, why is it harder to get the teaching assistants to join the union and how are you addressing? So maybe if you could touch on that in your answer. Sure. So, you know, when Act 10 happened, I think that, like, I always thought of it as like a public education shock doctrine. I don't, for folks that are familiar with that book. People across the state in the teaching profession were really very afraid and in some cases pretty paralyzed in terms of what was coming next and could we even survive as a union? And so just to give some perspective across the state, before Act 10, there were 98,000 members of our state union. There are now 30,000 members in our state union. So Act 10 has been devastating to many locals across our state. And so for Milwaukee, you know, I think we really did go through a time of, is our union going to survive? Are we going to find, are we gonna be able to project a new vision and a new way of being a union? And will enough people, will that resonate with enough people to like take the leap, jump over in faith that this isn't the end for us? So I feel like we went through stages of surviving and then becoming more stable. And I feel like now MTEA is moving in a big like power up phase. But what I know for sure is that the only reason we survived, the only reason we got stable and the only reason that we're positioned to power up now is because we continued to identify issues that mattered deeply to members and very simply that mattered to them in their daily work as educators or that mattered to their students. And so even though we didn't have a contract to rely on when teachers after going off a contract were told that we were going to be required to attend 20 hours of administrative staff meetings every month, that was a huge issue that people organized around and fought over for many years. And it was a long protracted fight. But instead of sitting with 20 hours of staff meetings, we're now sitting here with four hours. So identifying issues that mattered to students like our students' rights to have a second recess, our students' right to play in kindergarten, all of these issues that people brought forward and said, this is worth it to us. Class size was something that was very worth it to our members when they were trying to increase class sizes in the younger grades, kindergarten for second and third grade. So we feel that when members and potential members see our union take on like righteous fights, meaningful issues and win more than we lose, who doesn't wanna be a part of that kind of union? And who doesn't want to stand with like developmentally appropriate pedagogically sound teaching and learning, like that's what we got in the business. That's why we became teachers. Now I'll also say that new teacher orientation, we're hiring new people all the time. And it is incredibly interesting to me that as we survey and talk to early career educators coming to teaching for the first time and a really difficult time to become a teacher in Wisconsin, they consistently identify social justice as a key driver that they wanna see and feel in their union. And a reason why they will join a union. So having that affirmation and confirmation from new teachers entering the field is really important. And so when new teachers find out that we work with community groups and parents to make sure that Milwaukee Public Schools became a sanctuary district, that means something to new teachers and they wanna join our union. When new teachers find out that we're endorsing Black Lives Matter and the National Black Lives Matter week at school, early career educators resonate with that and see that as a reason that connects with their values of why they wanna be a part of our union. We do have 137 schools. We have worked very hard for there to be elected leadership in all of our school sites. I'll say though that before Act 10, when we had a contract we had something called distribution contacts. I don't know if any of you have this, but in schools where people were unwilling to step up to be a leader, a building rep in their school, you could be a distribution contact which just meant that you like put flyers and bulletins in people's mailboxes. When I became president, we're never having another distribution contact. I am confident, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are leaders inside of every single school in our district. And so it became the work of release leaders and staff to go into every single school and listen and meet with members and potential members to help them build that internal building structure to organize because without it, we can't fight and win. So that's been key for us as well. And then to the question about the educational assistant unit, I was just meeting with our EA president today and we were looking at like the past three months and charting out goals going forward. I think that the financial hit to our lowest paid workers, when I think about what $10,000 a year in wages and benefits means to me, I have over a thousand union brothers and sisters earning poverty wages and earning wages that put them in a position where they are constantly hustling, piecing together different jobs to make ends meet. So that is, I think that is a part of our membership as it stands in the EA unit. But I also know that as we continue to spend more time in schools and to meet with people, listen to people and to engage them in their issues, we have more members joining every day. So we really think that it's possible to move that teacher unit to 80%. And we really think that it's well within our reach to move the educational assistant unit certainly to a super majority and very likely beyond. That's great. Thanks all of you. So now we've got a lot of questions. So I wanna get to some of them. So we had a follow up question for Georgia, which I thought if folks wanted to chime in on what type of information do you gather in your database and your lists? What info is shared with local leaders and with site reps or stewards? And then I wanted to add another question that we got if folks wanna talk about how do you get members to participate in activities, not just pay dues? How do you spread the passion? So Georgia, do you wanna start and we'll go around? So the database is really just the information that members give us. So it's your school site, your address, phone number, an email address and whether or not you're contributing the place. But the information is disaggregated on the rosters so that at any given time the site rep can look and see what his or her site's membership looks like. Who do I need to talk to? What do I need to get from this person? Or is this somebody that I need to reach out to and have an extended one-on-one with because I need to move them on a particular issue. But also as we've run specific campaigns, so a couple of years ago we mounted or build a future fund the Fight Campaign which was to increase our dues because we were in a precarious financial position. We knew that sooner rather than later one of these cases would be heard by the court and would probably be decided against us. So again, rosters would then say, is this someone who has signed onto this campaign? Who's in agreement? Is this someone you need to talk to? So it's really just a way of tracking. Giving the chapter chairs a very defined basis of information so that they know how to work with their sites and who they need to work with. Hope that answered the question. Thanks, Georgia. I'll add one more question and then if Patrick and Amy wanna jump in. So in addition to thinking about lists and kind of getting people to do the work, not just to be members, maybe thinking about, and Georgia mentioned that they've, in LA they've recruited, is it 900 stewards or building site reps? We have 900 schools. We have at last count, I believe, 854 chapter chairs. 854. So do you have thoughts on how you recruit and retain stewards and how you get them to do the work of the union but also to make sure people are joining the union? Patrick? So we do multiple things. So first off to address the, how do we collect data? So we actually have language in our collective bargaining agreement that requires the company, the boss to turn over all eligible members who can join the union and we demand this information quarterly, right? So not only do we obtain the information on people that are in the union but people who are not in the union. From that data, because we get everything, we get your name, address, all that good information. From that data, we use multiple platforms. So we use the standard nation builder platform where we began to track different data. We also map the entire workforce. And when I say we map the entire workforce, I wish I didn't have the sign behind me but just to my right, you can see pieces of a map and those are red dots. That map is of Middle Tennessee and each one of our members is on that map. Each non-member is on that map and each retiree is on that map. The purpose for that map is so that we can section the entire work population in the city. The types of data that we hold in these maps are who your council person is, who your state senator, your state rep, all of the pertinent election data, some transit specific information, potential growth, projected growth, bus routes. The reason we collect all of this data, it's not only great for recruiting but it's also great for campaigns. So if I have a campaign that is taking place in the northern portion of the city, when you talk about engaging members and getting participation, I am much more likely to get participation from the people who live in the northern part of the city because we reduce the travel time. We reduce time away from family and in fact, we can engage those families. So when we begin to target, which brings back the nation builder platform and we have another proprietary program that we use, we specifically target those members. And so not that we don't reach out to the other members but we're going to blitz those members who live in that neighborhood. And the theory is simple. It's easier for me to get you to come out of your house and go a block than it is to get you to go 30 miles across the city. We do have members that would do that and we welcome that and we encourage that. But if I can't get you to come out your own door and walk down the block, we're in trouble. And that's also a way we get our membership to participate. In talking about recruiting stewards and retaining stewards, it's interesting because this morning, I had a class for prospective stewards. So we had our legal team come in and actually teach how to fill out a grievance, how to complete an investigation, what are best cases and arbitrations, how to fill out grievance forms. And from that, we get really, really technical. And so you can then begin to see whether a person is really interested in it or whether they're not interested in it. And then you can begin the process of developing potential stewards. I am very clear. I have a strict set of rules for people that wanna be stewards here at this local. One, you must be a trainer and you must be engaging. Also too, you have to have basic knowledge of our collective bargaining agreement along with some basic knowledge of what it's like to be a steward. So I do require some video training of our members because we want you to add value and the only way you can add value is if we can encourage you and you take part in the training programs that we have. So that's kind of in a nutshell what we do. Thanks, Amy. Do you wanna jump in and then we can do some final takeaways? Yeah, I'm sorry, Sam. Can you just tell me the question again? Oh, I'm recruiting worksite leaders, involving them in signing up members and then any thoughts about kind of list work, how you keep track, how you get those lists into building reps' hands? So we also give updated lists at a monthly basis to building leaders at our representative assemblies. We invested in a new database this fall and it is paying great dividends just in terms of what we're able to do to create very targeted mini-universes. So for example, as I shared earlier, we have about five days left in this recertification vote and what we're looking at is identifying school sites where we have a strong union presence, where we have a super majority of membership, but that we still have 15 or more non-members in that site and then overlaying that with a very, very strong recertification participation vote in those school sites. And we're going to, I think there are about 24 schools that we've identified that hit those marks and we're going to do a very intentional membership blitz starting next week and going into the new year. We always have hundreds and hundreds of non-members vote in our recertification election. They know that a union matters, they know that our union is powerful, but they haven't made that commitment to jump all the way in and be a dues paying member. So that is being able to identify those potential membership targets are very important for us. We also have a war room where we literally map out our 137 schools and I'll just say that as president this year, I'm visiting every single one of our 137 schools and I'll finish that work by mid-February because I think members have a right to expect their elected leadership to come to them and sit down with them and listen to the complexities and nuanced details in their local school context. In the visits that I was conducting between August and November before the election, in terms of identifying leaders and maintaining and sustaining leaders and having a plan for leadership succession and buildings, we have to ask members to do big things. We have to ask members to do important work and I don't know if there had been a long history of that in my union, of trusting members to do the big important work of our union. So I think that there are so many more leaders and activists in all of our buildings that truly just haven't yet been asked and trusted to do big and important work. And so as I sit with members and meet new members in every single school, I'm not asking them to do something small in the election. I'm not asking people to write a postcard or make a phone call. I'm asking them to go knock doors and talk to people even if they're uncomfortable doing it. So I think as leaders, we also have to be willing to push people to a place that they haven't yet been and might actually be a little uncomfortable going to but that's how you build a stronger union and that's how you build a more confident and powerful membership. Thanks, Amy. So before we wrap up, just wanna kind of tie in some things that I'm hearing from all of you. First, you've gotta go out and talk and listen to members and find out what their issues are. You've gotta ask them to do stuff, right? To do the work of the union. And it certainly helps if you've got stuff going on. So Georgia right now is in a huge contract campaign. They're fighting for a contract in LA. We might invite her back in January to tell us about they're getting ready for a strike. And Patrick talked about getting those small wins and working on the big fights, right? So if stuff's going on, people are more likely to wanna join the union but also get involved, right? We can't just talk to people. We actually have to put them into motion. And then we've gotta work from our strengths out. So Amy talked about where are our stronger shops? How do we work out from there? Don't just go to the hardest people first. Use your strengths and grow and build power. And then go to the, go to the work site where you don't have a steward. But start where you're strong and work out from there. And don't be shy about asking people. You have to ask people to join and you have to ask people to do the work, right? Because the small group of people right now is not gonna cut it. We need more people and not just members but involved. So do we have just quick takeaways from Georgia? Well, I have a quick ask. And that was a perfect segue. So on December 15th, beginning at 10 o'clock, for anyone who is in Los Angeles on that day, it is the March for Public Education. And we need people to show up and come and stand with us. So December 15th, 10 a.m. Grand Park, right across from City Hall. We are gonna be out there. Put on your red shirt, come and join us. It's the March for Public Education. Thanks Georgia. Patrick, do you have anything to add? So I guess just in short, please, no matter what, do not be discouraged. The work of the union is a righteous work. It can be challenging. But if you have a passion for it, it will always shine through. And you will be able to inspire people to do things that even they never imagined that they could do. And so I guess I would just leave you with that. And success is free. And Patrick, you mentioned that the climate is tough in Tennessee, it's an anti-union climate, but at the same time, it's a place where there's, it's a good climate actually for organizing. Absolutely. It is fertile ground in the state of Tennessee in terms of organizing. And we're excited about that, right? To change people's minds, to change just the way they think. Mind Ex-Door Neighbor is not a union member, but that's okay. I still respect him. I still respect the fact that he's a decent human being. And so he does the same for me. And through that, I can change his perspective as the way he views unions. And so we're all human beings, right? And we just believe in doing better, period. Just doing better. Thanks, Patrick. Any last takeaway from you, Amy? I'll just say that it's interesting being on this webinar a week after defeating Scott Walker. And so I will not tell you a lie. It has been a long eight years. But at a time when people thought that it would be the end for unions in Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, and I'm just gonna say, I wondered at times in the beginning if it would be the end. What I've learned is that it almost never is the end. That there almost always is a way to start over, to begin again. And I can just say that the members of my union have committed to our students and to each other to outwork and outlast our enemies. And that has really sustained us as a union and kept us focused when things got tough. And now we're closing a chapter and we're starting a new one. Thanks, Amy. So thanks so much to the three panelists for joining us. And just wanna remind everyone, you can pick up their stories and more are in the Labor Notes special issue. You can order copies. You can subscribe to our magazine if you go to labornotes.org. Stay in touch. We're gonna keep talking about organizing an OpenShop America at our trainings, at our conferences, because as you've heard, it's not going away. We can't make it go away, but we can build unions strong enough to survive and to fight back. So thanks to everyone and have a good night.