 Okay, we're live. We're live with a fantastic group of panelists from some of the biggest strikes of the second half of 2018. And we'll get started in a couple minutes. I'm just also going to go live on Facebook. It looks like you got an eye. Nope. It's an imposter. Just give us one more minute as we work out some of the, as I try to find our one remaining panelists. Oh, there we go. All right. Okay. We all of our panelists are, are here. Okay. Yes, all of our panelists are not only here, but their audio and video are working. So now we can get going. Thank you all for, for bearing with us. Yes. So. I am. This is Dan DiMaggio. I am the assistant editor of labor notes. And thank, thank you to everyone who's joining us tonight. For our end of the year webinar. This is our, our, the third webinar we've done and my first. So thanks for bearing, bearing with me as I, as I get my bearings here. So tonight we're going to hear from panelists from four big strikes of the second half of 2018. We have a. Jenny Johnson, who is a hotel worker from Hawaii. Where they just finished. 51 day strike, I believe. She didn't correct me if I got that wrong. We have Hillary Napsiger. Who is a Chicago charter teacher. Where they just, you know, also. Where they had the first. Charter network strike in US history and one. We have Matt Zills, who is. Mental health care worker at Kaiser. In Oakland. They also just went on a, on a week long strike last week, I believe. And we have Marie Cruz, who is a senior custodian at UC Berkeley. And she's been on a three day strike. Against outsourcing and around other issues in October. So I want to thank them all for joining us. And before we get started. This webinar is hosted by labor notes. If you want to find out more information about us, you can visit our website labor notes. Or our Facebook page. Labor notes. We are a media and organizing project. We will celebrate our 40th anniversary. Next year. We'll also. Take pride in building a network. Of rank and file activists and unions across the country. And in building what we. We're going to start with the labor movement. We're going to start with the labor movement. I like to call the troublemaking wing of the labor movement. So we're very glad to have these four panelists from that wing of the labor movement. Joining us. So I'm just going to choose one of you to. Just start. And I will unmute you. And then we can roll. So Jenny, maybe we can start with you. Okay. All right. Great. So this is Jenny Johnson. From the Sheraton. Why key key. And so Jenny, do you want to tell our. Audience a little bit about yourself, about where you work, what you do on your job. And what the issues were that. Led you and your coworkers to this, this huge. National strike. Sure. Absolutely. I'm a cook at the Sheraton, why key key. I've been there for about seven years. Our issue, much like what Hillary had mentioned earlier, we, our contract expired July, June 30th of this year. And the company actually wouldn't participate in any negotiations with us at all until after our contract had expired. And then when our contract did expire, we had about three months worth of negotiations with them, wherein they wouldn't address our, our proposals very seriously. They opened one of the negotiations simply by saying, we reject, you know, all 12 of your proposals that specifically dealt with housekeeping. So they, they entered negotiations not being very flexible and not being very open towards some of our requests. Mostly what we were looking for in our contract was an increase in contributions to our health and medical funds and our pension funds, along with raises. The cost of living here in Hawaii goes up by about 15 to 20% a year. And definitely our wages don't. So we're all trying to struggle to survive. And we also were specifically looking for some workload reduction issues. Most specifically in the housekeeping department where the housekeepers were saddled with a 15 room minimum a day, which in a seven and a half hour shift, we've done about 24 minutes to per room. And they were working through their lunch breaks and not taking the lunch breaks. And we just felt like that was a very unacceptable situation. And so that was kind of our, our biggest issues, obviously financial workload reduction and then also subcontracting. We have had a big problem with that here over the last, over the course of the last two contracts here, actually, all the hotels tend to make an agreement with the union about moving forward. And then during the course of the contract, slowly sneak work away from the, the union workers and try and outsource it to external companies. So that was kind of a big issue for us as well. So I guess kind of a little background on what we did. We were able to actually achieve most to get most of our, our proposals, the really important ones that we had asked for. We did win most of them ultimately after having to be on strike for 51 days, which was crazy, but fun. And team building. I've found it to be an amazing experience in terms of, I, you know, it's this really emotionally draining thing to not be at work and to not know how you're going to pay your bills, but the emotional bonding that happens with your coworkers, when everybody's in the same struggle, that was an oddly rewarding type of group building experience that I don't think anybody really saw coming. And that has become a really positive outcome for us here in Hawaii. Great. So how did you, yeah, how did you all sustain yourself for 51 days and, you know, and, and were you following the, the strikes elsewhere in the country? Yeah, definitely. Part of our situation was that the unite here locals across the country had worked pretty hard over the course of the last two contracts to line everybody's contract up so that they would all expire this year, mostly so that it gives us collectively more power, obviously, instead of one city going on strike, seven cities across the country went on strike against Marriott at the same time or pretty much about the same time, bringing much greater national attention than you would get in any one location, as well as just putting more pressure on Marriott as a company nationally and internationally. Let's see. So that was great. Also, it again, it sure helps encourage the workers here to know that they're not, it's not just the workers here that it is seven other cities that are standing up together, walking out together, standing by each other. And basically everybody standing up for the same thing, which is better wages and less corporate greed and better conditions in their work environment, which I think most workers all across America in any field probably want. So that was, it was pretty dynamic, I think, that we got a chance to do this seven cities wide. And I do know that towards the end we had Seattle, the local in Seattle, their contract had expired as well. And kind of after all of the other cities had already voted to go on strike, one of the things that Marriott did is they reached out and worked very hard to settle a contract with Seattle after they had taken their strike vote to ensure that there wouldn't be an eight city added on. So kind of that action alone, I think demonstrates the power that is created when you have multiple cities walking out together against one company. So that was pretty convenient. Yeah. So we're speaking with, with Jenny Johnson, who is a cook at the Sheraton Waikiki, and recently on strike for 51 days there. Did I get that number right? Yes, you did. So what was the result? What, what, you know, what, what came out of your strike? Well, we were able to get more than $6 wage and benefits increase over the, over the course of the contract. So that's not just wages, it's wages and increased contributions to our health and welfare fund as well as our pension fund. That was huge. We were able to also win the room drop for our housekeeping department, which was really important for us. That although that won't take effect immediately, that will come, I believe the beginning of the third year of the contract. We were also able to win some language that protects us against subcontracting moving forward, meaning if the, if the hotel tries to subcontract work out, they, that we could actually do, that some department can actually do in the hotel, they will have to pay significant penalties to the union, to the workforce. And then also kind of hand in hand with that, we were actually able to re, I don't know, re-secure jobs that we'd actually lost over the course of the last, you know, say six or eight years. There were several positions. A lot of work that had already been contracted out to outside companies. And we were able to win those jobs back. So though that work will be going back to union, union and workers. And all of this is really great because it, it turns into job creation, you know, when you get jobs back that have been outsourced, that's new more workers that need to be hired. The room drop in housekeeping, same thing. That's going to need, that's going to demand that the hotel hire 20 to 30 more housekeepers and have them on staff every day. So that's, that's great. We want to continue to build the union and build the members numbers here instead of slowly losing them, which is kind of what has been happening. So that was all excellent. And I think probably more importantly, well, the primary thing we won was some language that secures us against technology and automation in the workforce. So one of the biggest issues with hotels, many hotels are introducing mobile apps. So an app that you can download on your phone. And then essentially you can make your reservation on your phone when you get to the hotel. You can check in via your telephone. There's some sort of key keypad device that will be downloaded onto your phone. And then you can check into your room. You can actually enter your room without ever actually speaking to a front desk agent. This is something that we do see happening in other hotels, mostly in the mainland, but at the same time that is something that dramatically threatens the front desk department in hotel properties. You know, it is happening in a property that's not part of our union, but in on another island here and they have said that they get up to 30% a day in mobile check-ins. So we really saw that as being a dramatic threat to the actual numbers of people that would be working in the front desk department. So we're able to secure some language that prevents them from just prevents the company from just bringing in a new program or a new form of technology or a new automated program and just introducing it into the work environment without giving us a little bit of, we won I think a six month notification and more importantly, a request that if jobs are lost due to new technology and automation that those positions first and foremost, if possible be retrained to actually participate in the automated system, the running of the systems or more importantly, maybe discussions between the workforce and the hotel management so that we can see how we can bring automated systems into the hotel to aid workers and to help our jobs along instead of eliminating our positions. So that's kind of a, that's a really big deal. That was something that was actually one, that language was won by all of the, all of the United here locals that went on strike across the country. Outstanding. So thank you to again, that was Jenny Johnson from United here, local five in Hawaii. And congratulations to you if, if you weren't on a webinar, we would give you standing ovation now, but. So I want to move on to, to our next panelist. Mari Cruz, are you ready to talk now? Yes. Great. So, yes, we can hear you. So I thought it'd be good to go to Mari Cruz, Manzanaris who is a senior custodian at UC Berkeley and a member of AFSCME local 3299. And the number of things that Jenny spoke about was their fight against the outsourcing of jobs in the hotels. And I know that's been a big issue for you all in the UC system, which is one of the largest employers in, in state of California. Right. Yes. So I was wondering if you could just, if Mari Cruz, you could just tell us a little bit about where you know, what you do there and what the, what the members of your union do at the university of California. Yes. So I've been working at the university of California as a senior custodian for almost 20 years now. I work at the dorms mainly. And as me local 3299 is one of the largest unions that represents workers, service workers and patient care workers at the university. We have 24,000 members. We also have, it goes from the 10 campuses and the five medical centers. We have food service workers, custodians, maintenance workers, gardeners, truck drivers. We have security officers and we also, among other units and service, but we also have radiology technicians. We have x-ray technicians. We have respiratory therapists and a variety of other carriers that our union represents in the hospitals. So we would like, we also love to call us ourselves that as we run UC, because without us UC can't run, right? So our work is very essential for the function of these universities. Right. And can you tell us a little bit about the issues that led to your strike in October, you know, and what has been going on at the university? What has the university been doing to threaten good jobs there? Yes. The main issues are some by the inequality and the racial disparity that occurs in the university system. It's like a research, we have a research that, research that found that the university employment practices are worsening the conditions and the income, racial and inequality between the workers at the university, because we do have the executives who make a six figure salaries and we have the bottom lines where people are living with around $37,000 a year. So the disparity on the salaries is huge. And the university is always trying to reduce our ability to actually be able to come up with our covering our expenses with the salaries that they are offering. And right now we do have our contract fight. We've been without a contract for two years. So almost two years now and two strikes of three days each. So the university has been reducing the staffing levels. So we also are facing a lot of a contracting out our jobs. So job security is threatening our jobs also has our prior panelists said about that. We do have like our demands and that on the table about racial justice and salary disparities and all the inequality that is happening at UC, the university has rejected everything that we have been proposing. So the main issues, like I said, is job security, racial inequality and disparity on salaries. And the union asked me 3299 has really been explicit that your fight is a fight for racial justice as you said. Can you talk a bit more about that? About what you're trying to win in your contract to, to address racism and racial inequality. Yes, like, for example, over the last 10 years, the ratio between the average salary of UC top 1% of wages are in the medium salary for all workers from seven to one to nine to one. The top administrator salaries grew by 64%. And in the other side on our, on our side, the salaries was reduced from 24 to just 22%. So we didn't get any increases compared to other people on the, on the top salary. So, and the overall economic inequality contributed to racial and gender disparity because women and people of color are more likely to be concentrated in a lower paid workers. So our group of workers are mainly women and people of color, as I said before, and this disparity by the university, not trying, not even trying to kind of boost us up and keeping us in the, in the bottom areas are very unjust. And so the, the, the work that we do is essential work, but the university seems like we are not important and treat us like we're not important. So we, we are, we are calling them out and we are trying to, to make them understand that without us they're not going to be able to function, right? So we do, we do, we are not asking for something that it's impossible for them. We are asking for, for what is just for us as a workers and as a, as the ones who maintains this university as one of the best universities in the country. So I hope I can answer, I did answer. Yeah, yeah. And how did, how did the strike go? You know, briefly, did you get a lot of, did you get support from students, community groups? You know, what was, what was that like? Yeah, well actually our strike, the first strike was joined by CNA and APTI and it was around 50, 50,000 people out there. The community was all supportive. Students body, student body was supportive. We do have a lot of students who work with us very closely to help us to organize among worker, I mean among students. And we do have a lot of community members who are like churches that came to our picket lines and told us that what we're doing is right for the community. Because at the same time is that we improving the lives of the workers and as a union, we are also at the same time improving the life of the community that we live in. Because community and workforce is the same thing, right? Like members in the union are the members who go to church in the same community are the members who go to school are the members. And if we don't have the means to actually help this community, we all go down. So that's the importance of being together with the community when students and workers in the community get together is something very powerful. And it was shown in this strike. The second strike was joined by APTI, who is also joined us on the first one. CNA actually set up, set up their contract, but we still fighting for our contract. And that's when, when we're talking about racial disparity is because the university and APTI, I mean, CNA is mainly, is other people who are mainly white. It's not a lot of people of color. So the university knows exactly what they're doing, right? They creating this separation between the two races, like people of color and white so we can go against each other. In this case, we're not taking it as, as their fault. It's university's fault. It's their employer's fault because they do this in purpose to separate us. But even with that, we are committed to fight. We are committed to continue the, the protections to the worker, the workforce and the community that we live in. So the university cannot get away with creating more separation between us as workers. We know that we can count on CNA as we did last strike. We know that in sympathy and solidarity is there, but the university is doing everything they can to separate us. And we're not going to allow them to do that. So they say that right now it's like we continue without a contract. We continue fighting for the same thing. We continue, we're going to continue pushing the university to do the right thing for the well-being of our communities and the workers of the university. Thank you, Ari Cruz. Thanks for sharing the, the, the story from ask me 30 to 99 in the university of California system. And my crew has mentioned that the California nurses association and up to the professional and technical employees at the, at, on UC campuses, you know, honored their picket lines and went on sympathy strikes. My understanding is that that, that a similar dynamic may have played out in the Kaiser mental health strike last week. So I'm going to turn to Matt Zills now and he can talk a bit. Tell us a bit about that. So Matt, could you just tell us some more about, you know, who you are, where you work, what you do with what union you're with? So my name is Matt Zills. I'm a child psychologist at Oakland medical center with Kaiser Permanente. I've worked for Kaiser my entire career since graduate school as a psychologist, both working with adults and with children and families mostly. I'm part of the national union of healthcare workers and what our union actually came from a smaller side, smaller division of SCIU years ago in like 2008 when we broke off and formed our own union because we felt that SCIU wasn't adequately addressing the needs of healthcare professionals and was sort of in league with Kaiser and making agreements and not listening to our members in terms of what we wanted in our contract and what we felt were fair working conditions. So we left and formed our own union and initially Kaiser was very upset at us for not seeing an SCIU and was very aligned with SCIU. So we, similar to Marty Cruz, we were without a contract for five years and bargaining through that whole process until in 2015 they agreed to sign our initial new contract separate with NUHW and since then NUHW has really grown. The three units that were out on strike last week were, the way Kaiser is divided into Northern California and Southern California, there's two separate bargaining units within NUHW that represent the same group of workers. They're called, in Northern California they're called Integrated Behavioral Health and in Southern California they're called Psychsocial but it's all the same group of psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, licensed marriage family and therapists, licensed psychiatric nurses and a couple other types of mental health professionals, KDACs who work in substance abuse, that kind of thing. And so the three units that were out, there's also a separate unit. NUHW basically represents anyone who isn't, anyone who's a healthcare professional who isn't a nurse or a physician within Kaiser. So it's, you know, it's, it's radiology technicians, it's optometrists, it's dieticians, it's most people who have a specialized professional degree in some medical field because the way Kaiser is structured is all the physicians are kind of like the partners in a law firm and then their administrative wing like governs all of the contracts with the professionals. So we were out on strike last week for a five-day strike. It's the first strike we've had to do in these, this bargaining process. We've been in pre-bargaining starting in June and then official bargaining starting in July, I believe, because our contract expired in September. And we were looking, our main issue was that with the settling of this contract in 2015, the employer Kaiser Monante instituted a structured approach to managing our productivity and our time during our day that they called schedule management. And it was basically intended to, they had agreed to increase their staffing levels after they were fined by the state of California for having unreasonably long wait times. They were fined about $4 million at the time despite having, you know, making anywhere from $3 to $4 billion in profit every year and having between $20 and $30 billion in cash reserves, they were really resistant to hiring more staff. So they created the structure for our daily time at work in our clinics that requires us to see one new patient for every four return patients that we see. And unlike doctors, we can't say we're full or that we're, we can't close our panel of new patients. So we continuously get new patients. And while still having to treat the patients that we are currently seeing. And this is a way that we might be a little different than other bargaining units. We're also beholden to our licensing ethics that are governed by our state licensing boards that require us to maintain a certain level of contact and responsibility to patients and provide care that's adequate for the diagnosis that they have. So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place with our employers saying you can only see a patient for an office visit individually every, you know, four to eight weeks. And our licensing board saying you are responsible for the safety and health of this patient. And so with schedule management, they, they were trying to make sure we're using every minute of every day possible to see patients face to face, but didn't give us any time to account for phone calls or responding to emails or writing letters or for those of us who work with children and families doing a lot of the collateral contact that you have to do with schools and multiple family members. And that kind of thing. And really what it was an effort was to use the same amount of people to see more patients. They did this also at a time where they greatly expanded their patient load due to the affordable care act. And so they, they hired about, they increased their, their workload of therapists by about 30%. They increased their membership by over a hundred percent. So it actually deep. All of the new people they were hiring didn't create any more ability for us to provide care quickly. I mean, I think say probably the most similar thing people would be familiar with is teachers in a teachers union, are you know, fighting for smaller class sizes so that they can actually teach the kids what to do with. So we felt really strongly about this. And when we went into bargaining, that was one of the things we did in pre bargaining was to try to address this really onerous thing that they called schedule management that was not actually achieving their goals of helping us provide more consistent and reliable and frequent medical healthcare. And initially I was actually on the pre bargaining committee and I'm on the bargaining committee for our current contract negotiations. And Kaiser is very good at putting forth all the appropriate lingo and HR, I mean PR statements to make it seem like they're really interested in being collaborative. Unfortunately, what they tend to do is they don't have any people in their upper administration who can make decisions who are familiar with the mental health field or have any training in the mental health field. It's mostly doctors, people with MBAs or MPHs or quite a few RNs who have advanced into higher levels of administration, but they don't have any therapists on their end to understand anything that we're asking them for. So despite having about six sessions of pre bargaining, we were not able to come into bargaining with a clear idea of how we would restructure this system. And then during bargaining, they basically, during traditional bargaining, they basically were unwilling to talk about any economic changes, which include any of the benefits changes that we're asking for. And wanted to focus mostly on things that don't affect their bottom line at all. And then talking about how we might restructure this schedule management. We settled on something called provider profiles. So like what does your day look like every day? How many patients would you see? When are they scheduled? What's the ratio of old patients you would see in a week to new patients you would get in a week? And how could you be flexible with that if you had a patient who was very, very acutely suicidal or in danger of meeting an urgent intervention? And that whole process kind of just stalled because even after they settled an agreement with their other Alliance of Unions that offered, you know, generally Kaiser does offer very strong benefits packages to people, you know, consistent cost of living adjustments over the three years that exceed inflation. A very generous healthcare package and retirement package. And for whatever reason, in 2015, they were kind of, they sort of targeted our bargaining unit and our division of mental healthcare workers as not wanting to give them all the same benefits they give to all their other unions. They refused to provide, you know, cost of living adjustments that met with inflation. They've said this time they're not willing to reinstate any of the benefits we had previously. They took away a pension from our Southern California unit and it said they won't give it back. And we find this to being singled out as the one union they won't give these things to and they will give it to 100,000 other workers we find to be egregious and not bargaining in good faith. That's not the main reason we went on strike. The main purpose of our strike was to address the drastic understaffing of mental healthcare. And I think that's why CNA actually joined us is because nurses are familiar with this dynamic within the healthcare system of not prioritizing the types of supportive and preventive care and really just trying to focus on, you know, staffing for physicians. And I think the nurses, when they heard what our concerns were, were very, they also see a lot of our patients in the emergency room and the medical units because people who don't take care of their mental health often don't take care of their physical health or come to the emergency room with a problem. So yeah, it's mostly about staffing and also just being about offered the same benefits packages that they offer all of their other employees and not being singled out for retribution. Does that answer your question? Totally. So you were on strike for five days last week, but you're... We're back this week. I don't work on Monday. So I wasn't in the office today. And then tomorrow is our first official bargaining date with the bargaining committee after the strike. So we'll see. We're hoping like fingers crossed, maybe there'll be some movement, but unfortunately what we know from Kaiser is it's a huge bureaucratic organization and they don't send decision-makers into the bargaining room. They send like kind of... We sometimes call them punching bags to come and sit and listen to our concerns and then they have to take them back to their overlords and like get permission to come back and offer us something, which is such a broken way of bargaining because it's not only that the people in the room can't make any agreement, the people in the room might have like I think there's two or three people with a mental health degree in the bargaining committee, but they don't have any decision-making power and then back to a room of other people, none of whom work in mental health or have any training in mental health to make decisions without us explaining why we asked for them. So like with the... Yeah. So like with Marie Cruz and her co-workers at the University of California, keep your eyes on the ongoing struggle by Kaiser mental health workers for a new contract and for, you know, that ensures timely access for patients to mental health care. I just want to say one more thing before I'll say my piece. We feel this is what a really good opportunity to, with all the public attention to mental health and depression and suicide, to really draw attention to how we can improve this in our country. You hear a lot of rhetoric from politicians who say, you know, if we just had better mental health screening, mass shootings wouldn't happen and stuff like that. And those are great statements to make, but what they don't realize is they need to support the staffing and the infrastructure providing better mental health care. So actually Patrick Kennedy was a big part of our strike movement and our picketing. He came out and gave several speeches and hosted a forum in Oakland. We're really trying to get more public attention to something people are ashamed to talk about and don't speak up and demand access to the way they would cancer treatment or diabetes treatment or, you know, pulmonary hypertension treatment that all of those things are okay, but because mental health can have so much stigma it's a little bit shameful. We kind of feel like Kaiser is using the fact that people in the public don't like to talk about their mental health struggles to take advantage of those patients and that population to fund them the way they deserve to be. Thank you for sharing all that. Matt, have a duty. Thank you. So again, that was Matt Zills from NUHW, the National Union of Health Care Workers at Kaiser in Oakland. We just went on strike last week. And before we turn to our last panelist and thank you for your patience, Hillary, I just want to remind people that if you have, if you would like to ask a question, I believe you can click on the Q&A button on the bottom of your screen and, you know, type in a question and we'll see if we have a few minutes at the end to address, you know, a couple of questions or you may also put it in the chat box. And again, this is the Labor Notes end of the year webinar wrapping up the year with some really powerful strikes that have happened over the last couple of months. And so now we'll turn to Hillary Nafsiger who is a seventh grade teacher at a Chicago charter school that's in the Ossero Network and she was on strike earlier this month, I believe, along with hundreds of charter school teachers and paraprofessionals and support staff in Chicago and she'll tell us more about that. So thanks for being with us again, Hillary and thank you for your patience in going last here. So could you just tell us a bit about where you were and what you do there and what were the what it's like and what were the issues that sort of led you all to go on strike? Yeah, of course. I'm a seventh grade teacher at Carlos Fuentes Charter School. The Ossero Network within Chicago has 15 schools involved in it. We're not the only charter network that is currently well, we're not bargaining anymore but bargaining for new contracts this year but the really exciting part about bargaining this time around versus last time around in 2016 is that we're now a part of the Chicago Teachers Union Local 1. So having CTU back us for the first time in feeling camaraderie with a lot of CPS teachers felt very new this time around to bargaining. So the big push that we were really focused on and I feel like there is a consensus across the board is that we're looking for equal work for equal pay and that our school calendar is longer than CPS. Our school days are longer than CPS and we get paid for lower salaries than CPS teachers and realizing that a lot of our people teachers, paraprofessionals office coordinators they were leaving us constantly and consistently throughout the years to go to CPS schools and to go to suburban district schools and it's just not fair to our kids at the end of the day there's zero consistency between teachers for these students and they come back year after year missing so many different teachers that they thought were coming back to them and weren't. So we were really focusing on salaries not quite for teachers as much as our paraprofessionals our office staff our IT all of these people that are so valued in our school where we can't run without them but we're systematically not paying them what they deserve and of course we have a board and a network that runs the charter school and we have a CEO who just runs like a CEO who runs schools like that doesn't make sense to anyone who's an educator and he makes just as much money as Janice Jackson the superintendent of CPS who has like 10 times the amount of workload that he does so the big push for our strike was calling out Rich Rodriguez our CEO who wasn't at the table bargaining with us for eight months who never showed up to schools to talk to parents about any of this who just sort of said well it's a shame that teachers left the bargaining table and that you know they don't want to go back to school for the kids when in all reality everything we're doing is for our students so so this was the first as I understand it was the first charter school strike in history so how did you all you know get organized to do that were you afraid like what what gave you the courage to go forward yeah there was a lot of fear a lot of stress mostly on my part no I think it helped back in 2016 we were very close to striking to the point where I was like a strike captain at my campus and I was up every hour and a half or so checking my phone just to see like any updates are we official you know do we have a contract yet are we on strike what's going on and I think that this time around because we had already gone through that two years ago and we were facing the same problems with class sizes that are too large compensation that is not enough a long calendar and a long work day that just leaves our teachers and all of our school staff burned out at this point in 2018 it was kind of like get it together like what's going on like how do we still have these issues how we not work something out yet so our members I feel like we're more ready this time around because these were issues that we have been fighting for two years previous and they are still issues today and it helped that we had our contract action teams go out and different schools all across campuses across the network just checking in with staff regularly every week or two like how are you feeling this is a lot what are you most concerned about what are you hoping to get out of this contract we had teachers take surveys and our paraprofessionals and our OC they all took surveys to say like this is what we want you to stand up for and this is what we're willing to strike for so we always knew what our bottom lines were from the very beginning when we started our pre-bargaining in January and then when we started going to the table in April and then this school year our contract was expiring in October we really made the effort to reach our members and then start checking in with them about the strike months before striking was even going to happen even before we took an authorization vote to really reinforce to our members this is so important that we are willing to walk out of our building and we need to make sure you're ready so by the time the strike actually occurred a lot of the stress and a lot of the fear it was still there but it had been pushed aside for a lot of passion and enthusiasm and just willingness to be out there and get our voices heard because this had been a conversation we had been having for literally months and at that point it was like alright enough talk they're not going to listen to us unless we make them listen to us so we're out we're gone December 4th we were ready and I had so many members I was at the bargaining table so I didn't really see the action as much as I would have liked you but I had so many videos and pictures and members just texting me constantly for the four days that we were striking about how ready they are and how prepared they are about how proud they were of their signs so it was a long time coming but I think the reinforcement and the conversations that we were having consistently week after week is what really got everyone ready because by that time everyone was like alright strike December 4th let's do this we're ready let's do it let's leave let's go let's walk out and let's win something for our kids which we did so it was awesome yeah can you talk a bit more about what you won? yeah so the first and I think one of the biggest things that we were fighting for was putting into our contract that acero schools are sanctuary schools actually being a seventh grade teacher knowing and being a social studies teacher my students understand the immigration status of themselves of their parents of their family and it's a really scary thing especially in this new political climate that they're living in to not really know what's going to happen to them day after day in school when they're away from home and not having an article on our contract that solidified that we were sanctuary schools and we were there to protect and like comfort our kids the ball ball else with something that we as teachers just demanded flat out for our families for our students and that was something that we got written in to our contract which we were just so happy about we were able to get not only salary increases but actual like salary tables and schedules for our paraprofessionals and our office staff we were able to decrease our class sizes we were at a cap for 32 and we've effectively decreased our class sizes to 30 and that's something that's going to happen over time we were able to fight for academic freedom for our teachers to have freedom for what they are teaching in their classroom not just being told hey here's a curriculum that we heard from someone else that works so now you're doing that which is what a lot of our teachers were hearing in like this current school year and it was making them very unhappy with what they were teaching and how they were teaching it and it was ineffective for a lot of the kids we were able to fight for a shorter school year and not a shorter instructional day for kids our instructional minutes are still the same but shorter for teachers because a lot of what our time is spent in school doing is not necessarily teaching but like being on lunch duty, being on hallway duty and doing all of these things that take away our classroom time from being able to teach and meet with students and plan and prepare for hard days and there's countless other things but those were the really big things that we were fighting for what we were willing to go on strike for so the fact that we were able to get that for our teachers for our families, for our students it was a huge victory for us mm-hmm thank you for sharing all that Hilary and thank you to the rest of the panelists again that was Hilary Nafziger who Chicago Charter School teacher who just took part in a victorious strike there the first charter school strike in US history and there are still some schools where teachers and paraprofessionals are union members and are in negotiations right mm-hmm we were ahead of everyone else in terms of our bargaining and we were the first contract to be ratified across the city but there are 11 other contracts still on the table the nice thing is we're trying to line them all up so that they all expire at the same time with CTU's contract in four years which will give us more bargaining power next time around but now we're just standing in solidarity with everyone else and sort of leading the way to say we fought for this and it was hard and it was a struggle but we stayed strong and we stuck to our bottom line and if we can do it you can do it so we have a total solidarity all across the city for all of these other chargers that are bargaining and hopefully winning very soon mm-hmm fantastic so I think now we'll open it up for some questions but I will just ask questions that others are submitting if you have a question that you'd like to suggest we probably won't have time to get to all of them but you can feel free to throw that in the Q&A or in the chat box and to our panelists I just want to thank you all again Jenny, Mario Cruz, Matt and Hillary, if any of you have to go just let me know but before I go to the Q&A I just want to say if people are interested in finding out more about Labor Notes you can visit our website LaborNotes.org and subscribe to our magazine there it comes out every month it's coming out every month for 40 years as of next February we're going to be organizing a number of different celebrations around the country and events to commemorate our 40th anniversary and we've also got I don't know about a dozen troublemaker schools lined up in cities across the country next year and we'll be continuing to cover exciting things happening in the Labor Movement and just trying to to network, rank and file union activists also if you'd like to support Labor Notes you can visit labornotes.org slash donate we're in the midst of our end of the year fundraising drive right now too so one question that somebody asked which anybody wants to give a quick answer to is we were talking about strikes but what actions or events did you take before striking or to get ready to strike I know Hilary just talked a bunch about that but was there anything in particular that you would that you would do that you did before before you went on strike that you would like to mention well we did in Hawaii we did several community actions so I guess major demonstrations two specifically one on Labor Day here same thing just to bring increased public awareness to demonstrate to our company that we were bargaining with hey look like we have the people are ready to walk the people are standing up and standing together those community actions are without a doubt a necessary part of kind of the pre-strike activity mostly so that the community is aware of what the situation is with your membership and with your union mostly so they can get behind you and you can find that support out there I think it's important to have community involvement Mary Cruz mentioned churches also we had here in Hawaii we had our local politician aware of and prior to us striking they were aware that we were bargaining to potentially go on strike and then actually once we went on strike they came both the governor Governor David E. Gay Mayor Kirk Caldwell many of our state representatives came out and actually walked on the lines with us as well as making public statements on their own websites and via their own platforms in support of local five here and I think it's very important to have demonstrations leading up to a strike you know to show the company that you're acting against hey look here is the power of the people we are all here closing down the street causing chaos and this is what you have to deal with and very important to have those types of activities I think yeah for us what worked for us was that we did we also set up our priorities and our bottom lines and we did organize with the we invited the members actually to come and participate on our bargaining sessions so we opened the room for them to come and listen to what the university had to tell us about our proposals and here the arrogance with what at the university was behaving against us you know and it's like telling the workers you know what you don't deserve it we do appreciate that you put us up in the public eye as a biggest and better public institution in the country but you know what you're not worth it so it pissed them off and the workers actually were on board because they did actually had first-hand contact with those bargaining sessions and we do rotation and between campuses and medical centers when we were bargaining so our members had the opportunity to come and here in every campus and every medical center and we do organize actions during bargaining also so members can participate actively on what we were we were fighting for and like I said outsourcing was it's a big thing for us there's not the disparity or treatment between workers when you are outsourced you don't get the same pay you don't have the protections you don't have the benefits and we want the university to end those practices because that only targets our jobs and also doesn't improve the quality of life of the people that are working for these institutions so yeah setting the priorities and having the workers involved in the whole process of bargaining that help us to lead up to our strike I would say that we did the same thing we did we really encouraged the membership to be involved in the bargaining there was I think 17 official bargaining committee members but any other members were invited to sign up and come and witness the bargaining sessions that I wish we could have rotated amongst our medical centers the way you guys did all of ours were held at a central location in downtown Oakland so people had to travel to come see it the other thing that our union was really on top of this time around was sending out bargaining updates from every day that we went to bargaining to all of our membership on the mobilize platform and then also starting a social media campaign I'll share the link to it in the chat window it's called Kaiser Don't Deny and it was intended to be re-coasted onto Facebook, Twitter and invite patients and clinicians and community members to post what their concerns are it also had a link that you could see what our bargaining platform was and our big-ticket sort of goals for the bargaining and what we were aiming to do prior to going out on strike to try to really get the word out in the community great thank you all for your answers to that and one thing I would just add is that one of the functions of labor notes is to collect stories answers to these types of questions and then share them and so I would urge people to check out our books like the Troublemakers Handbook or Secrets of a Successful Organizer or How to Jumpstart Your Union about the Chicago Teachers and also to share your stories with us if anybody wants to get in touch with me you can write me at dan at o-r-g that's d-a-n at labornotes.org and if anything sparks your mind here you have any further questions please do that I just want to go to one more question and see what we have time for after that but I think it's phenomenal we have participants ranging from I'm on the East Coast and then we've got Hillary in Chicago and Matt and Mari Cruz from California and then Jenny in Hawaii but this question comes from Steven in a remote location in Alaska and he says he's president of a small 29 member local in a remote location in Alaska he asks what strategies were you able to use that might be helpful in reducing the fear of retaliation for members for whom there is no anonymity in numbers so I know that's a specific question but what do you do to help produce the fear that people have what we do is that we actually invite workers to make it personal like with the regions of the university do to us it takes at all in our families at our own homes we bring it to them at their own homes at their own offices where they function where they have people who admire them so any event that they do we bring a group of workers and workers love to do that like they see the fear in their faces they see the nervousness that they react to and also they know that we're not playing that our families matter that our conditions are not okay and that we need to get it improved and that we are serious when we're saying that we need to have protections at the workplace we also have language in the contract that says that there's not to be retaliation against us educating the members about their labor laws also is a big piece because that way they know that they're not alone that the laws actually protects them against retaliation and we make sure that they are very aware of the Weingarten rights which are protections against retaliation when you have a union activity going on and so putting that up front and giving them the confidence of yeah if you participate and you are very active in your union you actually protect it you're not going to be retaliated against and if they dare to do it you're going to have the union behind you and get a sense that they work in a working environment being very, very cognizant of every article of your contract so that any time there's an infringement you as the stewards seem incredibly knowledgeable and ready to stand up to management so that they get the sense the feeling that you have and you've got their back and you're looking out really encourages people to participate when they see they want to be effective with that without a doubt informing the members of actually what their legal rights are is huge it's very important that instilled confidence and then and then definitely Matt exactly what you just said like making sure in workplace every day that you are vocal about what the stipulations of your contract are what we can and can't do what the managers can and can't do being open and vocal and upfront about that without a doubt kind of a stir reassures the the other members you know that they're not alone and that what they're doing is acceptable is right is you know well within their their well within the law that's very important for people to know to instill confidence to stand up for themselves anybody else want to add anything same especially with like new teachers who are you know non-provisional non-tenured they're afraid you know it's my first year and we're on strike and I don't know what to do but again like being kind of like that veteran voice of these are your rights this is what you're entitled to as a union member this is what we are protecting you from and then just making sure that they know like just be diligent if you notice something shifty happening and something shady is going on and all of a sudden like you're getting called out for things that weren't happening before it's like keep a collection of everything and make sure you're contacting your representative and your building and invoicing your concerns while still like staying true to the fact that we are in this together as a collective unit and if they're gonna punish you for something like this like just know that they can and they can't scare you out of standing up for yourself and you're right this may sound a little counterintuitive but I would also say that there's a role for being an effective counterpart to management when things are going well like if you are not in the midst of a difficult bargaining and contracts are being fairly in work being seen as somebody who works effectively with like immediate management to get things done and resolve to make workers lives easier on a day-to-day basis it'll get conveys the idea that you're not just here to be a thorn in management side all the time but you're absolutely correct and like call things out when something not cool is going on yeah absolutely important to recognize that we're here to solve problems not just to point them out yeah so I don't want to keep you all for too long so maybe we can just we just you know call it a night what do you think or call it an afternoon Jenny what is it it's like two o'clock there five five okay I'm about my beautiful from that hour yeah but I just want to again you know thank all the panelists there was a lot that happened this year you know and we have had the privilege at Labor Notes of you know of covering a lot of it you know including the brilliant West Virginia and Arizona and Oklahoma teacher strikes and beyond you know and there's a lot of phenomenal organizing that we're seeing places like Amazon among largely Somali immigrant workforce in in the Twin Cities or I think the Google walkouts have been really incredible and are something to keep an eye on but I would I'm so glad that we you know we're able to hear from the the four of you you know and really I think have a collective conversation and I certainly learned a lot and I'm sure that our attendees we're watching at home learned a lot as well and you know I hope that we can continue this conversation going forward and you know and continue building the the trouble-making wing of the labor labor movement so thank you all for for joining us and thank thanks everybody who stayed on the call and listen to this conversation and we'll do it again sometime because we are doing these things every month so so we'll see you in 2019. Yay thank you. Thank you. Thank you.