 area members meet on Thursdays. Yeah. You might mention that, you know. Yeah, cool. Yeah, I definitely will. Okay, so I'm going to give you a tour and tell you what the Worker Center's about. Great. You ready? Yes. Okay, so welcome to the Vermont Worker Center's Burlington office. Here it is. We, so at the Worker Center, we're a statewide organization and like a lot of times some people ask like, what is, or where is the Worker Center? And the Worker Center is not a physical location. It's an organization of people who are fighting for their human rights, but we do have a physical office and this is it. And we also, this space isn't just the Vermont Worker Center's office. It's also in a lot of ways a hub for community organizing and labor organizing in the Burlington area. So in addition to the Vermont Worker Center, migrant justice also has their office in this building and we share the space with them. We have other groups who you, who we, who are part of our Burlington office space hub, like the UE, the union that represents the workers at the city market and workers like at the food shelf and other parts of the community in Burlington. We also share the office with parents and youth for change, which is an organization of parents and young folks in Burlington and many, many unions use our office for their meetings and for get-togethers and to plan things and so it's kind of a community hub here in Burlington. But the Vermont Worker Center is a statewide organization and we have members, we call them organizing committees. There are little groups of members all over the state that meet and carry out the work of the Worker Center and those are all over the state, county by county, but this is the place where the Chittenden County Organizing Committee meets every other Thursday and yeah if you were here this is probably the quietest it'll ever be. Normally there's people on these computers or in that office in that office have a little meeting over there some folks over here making phone calls, getting ready for a big event or something like that. It's a hustling, hustle and bustle in this office usually. What's the next big event? The next time that you probably see a lot of people milling about is at our meetings on Thursday evenings for our members who are part of our organizing committee which is like the core team of members who are planning our activities in this area and they're just ordinary people who have joined the Worker Center because they want to fight for human rights together and we meet here every other Thursday and at the end of the meeting we'll usually have food and people will hang out and talk and just spend some time together and actually the person who just walked in is Lisa. Hi Lisa. These are our friends from upstairs at CCTV and they're just doing a little spotlight on the Worker Center. I don't know I put you on the spot but yeah. Well what I came in for is some of the cards the universal health care oh okay so I'll take them to my church because I'm leaving you know out going out of town but okay my church because we have a table you know where we put oh great social justice. Sure. So the postcard actually is calling basically given what's happening in Washington right now with healthcare people are really worried that they're going to lose access to the care that they have which is already not adequate and not affordable and so we're saying more than ever right now we need to we need our governor and legislature to actually implement act 48 Vermont's universal health care law and these are petitions to the governor and legislature asking them to do that but when what we actually use them for is both to to put pressure on the governor and legislature but also to use as an opportunity to get out and talk to people in our communities ask what their health care situation is there's a little place for people to write their personal story and just build relationships and connections because we know that a petition isn't going to win us universal health care but large numbers of people coming together working together and I'm having our voices heard is actually what's going to change that. You have to keep working at it. Yeah um there in my car so um and my car is not here I just realized let me see what does somebody want to go to the church on Sunday do you have your phone on you do you have your cell phone do you want to give him a call and see if he can come back and bring him by that'd be great thanks. So Kate how did you get involved in the worker center? Um yeah why don't I I'll come sit down but um I um how did I get involved with the worker center well personally um I joined as a member in 2007 which was 10 years ago and I was a student at UVM at the time and I was one of those students who is in a massive amount of student debt as a result of my time at UVM and was there I learned that um from a group of students who was organizing that the top administrators at the university were making lots and lots of money meanwhile the folks who worked to make the university run um the lowest paid workers often had to work two or three jobs just to make the bare minimum of survival and so uh and then meanwhile I'm going into all this debt whereas all that money going you know so it that didn't seem right to me and I got involved with a student group that was organizing around livable wages for the workers on campus and through that I met folks at the worker center and uh found out about the health care as a human right campaign and because my family had really struggled with access to health care um because my family had really struggled with access to health care when I was a kid um that really hit home for me and I wanted to join that fight but um also what kind of stuck me at the worker center why I'm still here 10 years later is because uh it's really a home it's really a community where um ordinary people who are struggling to have access to the things that they need to live dignified lives come together to say this is not the system we want for our world we have ideas for a better system and uh we're gonna work together to make that happen and we have a we we have a plan and a strategy for how we're gonna do that and so that was really what made me stay and why I'm still here because I still believe that we can do that and because now I have a community of people hundreds of people over the state that we're in it together and I'm growing so the worker center is an organization uh that's about or how should I say this so who the Vermont worker center is is we're a membership organization we're sort of like a union for the community it's not based out of one workplace or one kind of worker but we are an organization for people and when when we say worker center we sort of use that term broadly to mean anybody who anybody who um is you know working unemployed retired on disability for whatever reason um like a young people um we're the ones that we don't currently own enough to just survive we need to work or do something else to be able to to be able to get the things we need to live and live and survive and so that's what we mean by workers at the worker center and right now what we see is that our system in the society in this country is such that most people can't do that there's a vast amount of inequality and uh there's some very wealthy people and then there's lots and lots of us who don't have what we need and so when you look at you could look at there's lots of different issues that affect our communities the ways that we struggle to make a living the ways that we struggle to access healthcare the ways that racism divides us and pits us against each other and is very dangerous and harmful to many people in our communities the way our immigration system forces people into very difficult situations and so we at the worker center see that all though as part of one system where though there's a wealthy few that make decisions that affect all the rest of us and we don't get a say in the decisions that affect our lives and that if we had a greater voice and we had a system that was actually based on human rights and based on meeting people's needs um for everybody um that we would be able to overcome that and so we've actually chosen the healthcare as a human right campaign as a place to really focus on because we think it has the potential to set an example for that so many of us are impacted by healthcare in different ways so it's an opportunity for us to come together around something we have in common it's an opportunity for us to set an example of how our system could work um that's not about making profit for insurance companies but rather for actually providing care and a human need for those of us in our communities so even though healthcare is the thing that we're really focused on right now um it's not just about healthcare it's about healthcare as an example of how we want to see the world work in general um so that's um that's a big part of what we're doing right now and so uh in order to do that we believe that we need to be organized we actually can't um if we took all of the activists and all of the people who've been coming out to marches and rallies many of them which has been so inspiring over the last few months and we all got together um even then that wouldn't be enough people to make change what we see our task at the worker center is that we have to go out and talk to those folks in our communities who are struggling to meet their needs and struggling with healthcare and other issues um but not yet um not yet seeing themselves as part of a movement to change that and not yet having their voice be part of the conversation about what should be different and how we should get there and so we're going out um like Lisa mentioned going to her church to talk to people to ask them to sign petitions and see if they want to get involved but we also have been getting out all over the state knocking on doors um in communities and talking to people and right now um we're asking people to come out to uh the green mountain care board hearings to share their stories about how the healthcare crisis is impacting them and that's one of many things we're doing to build that drumbeat for universal healthcare where are the green mountain care board um the green mountain care board meets in montpelier once a month on thursdays and this time every year in july the insurance companies request rate increases they want more money for healthcare plans money that comes from us people trying already struggling to afford healthcare and the green mountain care board has to approve them and they hold a public hearing on whether or not they should do that right now blue cross blue shield is requesting over 12 percent on average rate increase for their insurance plans which i don't know if you've heard but most people in vermont aren't getting a 12 percent raise in this year so uh and healthcare is already pretty unaffordable so we're mobilizing people to come out and share their stories about why we not only need to not raise the rates on our current health insurance plans through vermont healthcare act but we actually need to scrap that system all together and move towards universal healthcare system that's great because most of us don't know about these raises until we get the notice in the mail that's right yeah and so we're going to be getting folks to come out and share their stories and hopefully make an impact on that but more than anything get connected to each other so that we can continue that struggle together that's great thank you for inviting us yeah thank you for coming by