Hot Tubbin' For Justice

In my line of work I hear a variety of complaints. Some are definitely worse than others, mostly because the management of my employer are ignorant and/or lazy when it comes to reading our contract and facilitating labour relations. Let’s face it, no one calls the union office to say “guess what Karen, my manager is awesome.” I believe our members are an intrinsic part of the operation of the University of British Columbia and protecting their rights is the reason I get up in the morning. This conference has been a great opportunity to learn more about the US labour movement and the context surrounding workers' rights. Workers in the United States are under attack. 36/50 states are “Right to Work” and it’s becoming more and more difficult for workers to organize. For those of you unfamiliar with “right to work” the simple answer is that the state can require union membership but members can opt out of paying dues yet reaping the benefits of union services (causing tension amongst...

Just before I left for California I was introduced to the term “manel.” And I laughed. Then I was irritated because I realized then and there that I had been conditioned to hearing from all-male panels all the time - without a thought. It’s just the way things are. Argh. I remember thinking it was weird at the Canadian Library Association conference in June that the last panel, the main event, was all male speaking to a predominantly woman crowd at a conference where library work is mostly done by women. At union conventions and conferences the speakers are mostly men - at the CUPE BC convention earlier this year - the opening night was all men and convention chaired by men until late on the second day, in a convention hall that was full of mostly women delegates where our membership is close to 70% women. I have never seen truer diversity than at this conference this week. The panels have been stacked with sisters from different races, sectors, unions, nationalities, languages, cla...

There’s been a lot of talk about memory, storytelling and history/herstory at the conference this week. For the most part, the history we learn is from the colonial perspective where marginalized people of all types - whether it be class, race, gender...take your pick - memory and history is lost. It’s often undocumented or if it’s captured at a ll, it’s in nontraditional ways - there aren't a lot of publishers who told the other side of the story so it makes it that much harder to research, and add to school curriculum. I was reminded this week that art preserves our cultural memory and documents history in a way that academia and traditional means of media and textbooks won’t ever capture. I’m reminded of the importance of artists like Tupac Shakur whose work is about the young African-American experience in California in the 90s - there is no history book that covers that material at all. If we did hear about it - it was through newspaper articles written probably by white...

Ok, It's time to resurrect this thing and what better event than my experience at the Summer Institute for Union Women in Los Angeles last week. We always talk about how relationship building and solidarity are at the very core of our trade union principles. That our values are built on the strength of the collective in the struggle for equity and inclusion and we always do better when we rise together. "What we desire for one, we desire for all.” The opportunity to share space with women from BC, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii and California from a variety of unions and community groups has been equally humbling and inspiring. In our workshops and on our panels,  the incredible diversity of the speakers, artists, facilitators and participants has made this one of the richest learning experiences of my life (and I’ve attended a lot of conferences, meetings, forums, conventions, yo). The SIUW’s opening plenary ignited the fire for some truly strategic and honest conversatio...