Talking union contracts: The struggles, strategies and success stories of UUP collective bargaining

Collective bargaining is the foundation that organized labor is built on. 

Truly, it’s at the heart of what unions are and what unions do for their members. 

When UUP negotiates a contract for its members, our union has a equal hand in determining terms of employment—including compensation, job protections, benefits, work hours and more—with our employer, the state of New York. 

Over the years, UUP has achieved many gains through collective bargaining, from securing health care benefits and per-course minimum pay for part-time employees to annual across-the-board salary increases for our members and everyone we represent in our bargaining unit. 

In our current contract, which expires July 1, we negotiated to have New York’s Paid Parental Leave—up to 12 weeks of guaranteed, fully paid leave following the birth, adoption or foster placement of a child—added to our agreement with the state. We also established 7-year and 12-year retention awards based on an employee’s length of service—a UUP goal for decades. 

We also maintained our health benefits package with no increases in copays or employee share of premiums. 

These gains were not easily gotten. They never are. 

In this episode of The Voice Podcast, host Fred Kowal--who's also UUP's statewide president--talks to three people who were at the table to negotiate UUP's last three contracts with the state of New York. 

They are: 

• Former statewide Vice President for Academics Jamie Dangler, chief negotiator for our 2011-2016 contract, easily one of UUP’s most difficult contracts to negotiate.  
• Elizabeth Hough, UUP’s former counsel to the president, who was at the table for two UUP contracts, the 2016-2022 agreement and the union's current 2022-2026 contract, which expires July 1. 
• UUP Chief Negotiator Bret Benjamin served on UUP's Negotiations Team for the 2016-22 agreement and was chief negotiator for our current contract. He's also chief negotiator for a new contract we’re negotiating with the state. 

In Labor Lookback, Mike Lisi explores the impact President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration had on workers and the entire country during the Great Depression. He also looks at the life of folk icon Pete Seeger, a longtime union supporter. 

Kowal discusses the brings home the importance of collective bargaining to unions in Kowal's Coda. 

Music used in this podcast: 

"It's Got to be Love" - Henry King & His Orchestra with vocal by Joseph Sudy 

 "Solidarity Forever" - Pete Seeger 

Transcript

Fred Kowal: 0:00

Hello, I'm Fred Kowall, President of United University Professions, and this

Unknown: 0:06

is The Voice, I am a Was the

Mike Lisi: 0:33

voice podcast is a production of United University Professions, the nation's largest higher education union, representing more than 42,000 academic and professional faculty and retirees at state-operated SUNY campuses across New York State, UUP also represents employees at SUNY System Administration and SUNY Public Teaching Hospitals in Brooklyn, Stony Brook, and Syracuse. I'm Mike Lisi.

Fred Kowal: 1:10

Collective bargaining is the foundation that organized labor is built on. Truly, it's at the heart of what unions are and what unions do for their members. When we negotiate a contract for our members, we have an equal hand in determining our terms of employment, including compensation, job protections, benefits, work hours, and more, with our employer, the State of New York. Over the years, UUP has achieved many gains through collective bargaining, from securing health care benefits and per course minimum pay for part-time employees to annual across the board salary increases for our members and everyone we represent in our bargaining unit. In our current contract, which expires July 1, we negotiated to have New York's paid parental leave up to 12 weeks of guaranteed fully paid leave following the birth, adoption, or foster placement of a child added to our agreement with the state. We also established seven year and 12 year retention awards based on an employee's length of service, a UUP goal for decades. We also maintained our excellent health benefits package with no increase in copays or employee share of premiums. These gains were not easily gotten. They never are. Today on The Voice Podcast, we're going to take a behind the scenes look at what it is like to negotiate UUP contracts with people who were there over the last three contracts and are presently involved in our process. Former statewide vice president for academics Jamie Dangler was chief negotiator for our 2011 2016 contract, easily one of UUP's most difficult contracts to negotiate. She retired in 2021 but she's here with us today, eager to discuss those wonderful days. Elizabeth Huff, UUP former counsel to the President, worked as director of contract administration for PEF for nearly three decades before coming to UUP in 2014 to negotiate two contracts for our union, the 2016 22 agreement and our current four year contract, and last but certainly not least, Brett Benjamin. Brett can talk about our last three contracts, because he's been a part of them. He was a negotiations team member for the 2016 22 agreement and served as chief negotiator for our current contract. He's also chief negotiator for the new contract we're negotiating with the state right now, and we're hoping we'll have a tentative agreement very soon, Jamie, Elizabeth, Brett, welcome to The Voice. It's good to see you all again. Now, of course, some of you I see, well, one of you I see all the time, and that would be Brett, but Jamie and Elizabeth, it's great to see you all. I want to ask a real basic question. I mean, we got to start somewhere. Collective bargaining is a principle, which, like I said at the start, is the foundation for unions, for our existence. We bargain together for things that we cannot get as individuals, whether it's job security, compensation, whatever the case may be. When you look back, Elizabeth, you told me prior to our taping that you've been involved in seven rounds of contract negotiations. How did you get started, and what moved you to want to get involved in this kind of work that you've obviously you dedicated your career to?

Unknown: 4:33

Well, the interest in being involved with unions started because I was president of the Restaurant Workers Local in Madison, Wisconsin, while I was an undergrad, and had been involved in contract negotiations with multiple unions in my early career on behalf of myself and other folks I worked with, both as a restaurant worker in Madison, but then also later. As a young attorney, so it was always something that I was interested in. I deeply believe that collective bargaining and the union movement has brought important gains in the lives of working people, and I was interested in finding a way to advance that in my professional career. So, after a number of years working as a young attorney in New York City, I moved up here and got the job with the Public Employees Federation, which preceded my tenure at UUP, and was assigned to the 1995 contract team with PAF, actually six months after I started working at PEF, and the rest is history, because you know, once I got my feet wet doing negotiations for PEF, I kept doing it. So,

Fred Kowal: 5:51

when you were assigned, for lack of a better term, six months in at PEF, how did you respond to that? Did you draw on your earlier experiences with the restaurant workers, with your representation of colleagues, did you feel like,"Oh, I got this, or was there shock and awe when you..

Unknown: 6:09

it wouldn't be shock and awe, and mostly because a lot of private sector negotiations tend to be more often than not single geographic location shops, they're not big statewide mega negotiations, so the scale of what we were negotiating, the size of the contracts that I'd previously negotiated before I came to work for PEF, were I used to joke about the fact that the size of those contracts financially was equivalent to a rounding error, given the size of the state contracts that we were negotiating, and you know, coming to grips with just the scale of our endeavor at the table, whether it was with PAF four, now with UUP, the scale of our endeavor to negotiate statewide agreements that address the concerns of very diverse bargaining units, both PEF and UUB, UUP had that was a huge learning curve when I first started working in negotiations with PAF, you know the concepts of, you know, what it means to bring a team together, develop a series of proposals, work on some consensus among the team. As you're moving into negotiations, table conduct, you know how you handle yourselves at the table, those concepts are similar, but the scale was completely different.

Fred Kowal: 7:46

Yeah, absolutely. Oftentimes, when I'll be in conversations with folks who are in other locals in Nice, it, and they talk about negotiating contracts with school districts and school boards, and so forth, those can be very complex contracts, but then when I talk about the membership of UUP and the job titles and the workplaces, yeah, aside from the fact that you know we represent 42,000 people, Jamie, you know, as I said earlier, you were tabbed to be the chief negotiator for 2011 contract, give us a little bit of background going back prior to that. How did you end up as chief negotiator? Because, as memory serves, throughout UUP history, generally speaking, although that pattern has been totally blown out of the water, and I think it's a good move. Previous to that was always a statewide officer who is chief negotiator in your case, that changed, but I want to go back a little bit. I want to go back to prior to what was your involvement with negotiations prior to taking that role in 2011

Unknown: 8:55

Well, I guess I'd have to start at the beginning of my work with UUP at my campus, right. So I was a new faculty member in the late 80s, and I'm sorry, late 90s, and into the 2000s very active on my campus, and that's Courtland, at Cortland, at SUNY Cortland, and aside from working to get some positive change through our labor management venues on the campus, I began to get involved in statewide UDP activity, probably because I learned, along with many of my colleagues, that many of our issues required statewide mobilization of our members and developing our agendas and proposals, and ultimately statewide contract negotiations. So I kind of evolved from focusing on my campus level UUP work to getting more and more involved at the state level, and I served. Certainly can't say exactly why our then UUP President Phil Smith asked me to be the chief negotiator for the 2011 16 contract, but I can speculate that it probably had something to do with the particular issues that I had been working on, and some of the negotiations experience I developed along the way, though some of it was again small and negotiations in labor management contexts. So I began to do a lot of work statewide with colleagues across campuses on family leave on issues for our part-time employees. One of the greatest experiences I had initially to learn a bit about how things worked, and I think it really prepared me for negotiations later on was at a context in which I met Elizabeth for the first time, and that was serving as UUP representative on the statewide joint labor management work-life services board, where you're sitting at the table with representatives from the governor's office and the other unions and and staff members from various agencies, and I learned a lot about how you press for positive benefits for our members and press to deal with the problems, so that may have been one of the experiences that made me at least begin to get ready for a role in negotiations. I'd also done a lot of work again, starting on my campus and then working with others on salary compression issues, and of course the part-time minimum issue. We were concerned about the slow movement of salaries, because at the time we didn't have what you now have, the retention awards and things of that nature. So I think it was my literally my organizing work with other members, and some of the exposure I got to actually working with state officials, as well as other UUP colleagues, to try to press for moving forward on issues. So that's a bit of it, I was on the 2007 11 negotiations team, and I think I played a significant role in pressing for certain issues, doing some of the major presentations, and also I was one of the note takers at the table, and I learned an awful lot from that experience, so that I think set me up for being considered as someone who might be able to lead a team.

Fred Kowal: 12:47

Were you surprised when Phil called on you to do it?

Unknown: 12:51

Well, I think my first response was to be very excited. I mean, I just had so many ideas and issues, and again, I was not on my own. I had so many members that I'd been working with. I mean, we had proposals and agendas, and you know, so I was really excited at the time he asked me. We did not know exactly what was coming from our then governor. Well, you know, so I said yes in a very excited way for realizing what the road before me would be,

Fred Kowal: 13:31

definitely, definitely, so Elizabeth, when you stepped in for the same one for 2011 did you have trepidation about that, did you have a clue, or were we all on the same page? Where this kind of came out of nowhere.

Unknown: 13:47

I mean, everybody knew that when Cuomo was elected, he was coming after the public sector unions, and particularly when they decided not to use the state's historic negotiators at the governor's office of employee relations, but announced that they were hiring consultants to do the negotiations, one of whom's experience was actually working in a bankruptcy reorganization law firm.

Fred Kowal: 14:19

Yep,

Unknown: 14:20

we knew we were coming into something that was going to be very tight, tough, and you know, at PEF, there were folks involved in the 2011 negotiations who had also been involved in the last negotiations with Mario Cuomo's administration, and so knew that Andrew was,

Fred Kowal: 14:42

yeah, Apple didn't fall far,

Unknown: 14:43

a little scorched earth, so we had a lot of trepidation, but we didn't know how scorched earth,

Fred Kowal: 14:52

yeah, exactly, yeah, so to complete the circuit here, we've got Elizabeth, who's a lawyer, we've got Jamie. Who's a sociologist and Brett, who's in the humanities literary scholar. So I'm a political scientist. So we have all this diversity. What brought you to be interested and wanting to be a part of negotiations teams? And so that's part one, but part two is in the 1622 contract, which for you up was unusual in terms of what transpired. When did you feel that to put it in real blunt terms that you said, yeah, I got this shit, I can jump into a leadership role. So how did those two things happen?

Unknown: 15:40

Like Jamie, I sort of got started at the chapter level, doing a lot of work, and I think I was pretty successful in developing a lot of sort of policy-based reports and proposals, and trying to move the agenda forward in some concrete ways, like I think I was able to build a chapter that was focused on organizing internally, building real contract, you know, kind of campaigns, but like Jamie said, realize that there's a limit to what can be done at the chapter level, and so the opportunity to join the negotiations team was was welcome. I had never done it before, so I agreed to join Fred. You asked me, and I also was a note taker on that team, which I think helped, you know, one of the interesting things about that contract for us was that we were following on the heels of the scorched earth contract, which meant that I think our posture at the table was to try to throw every single thing we could at the wall. We had just hundreds and hundreds of proposals, from like the most mundane to the most like absurdly ambitious, and you know, our team dynamic was one of trying to build out this, this huge array of really the full list of all the grievances that you up members had coming out of that 2011 contract, and so it took us a long time to get to the end, and, and you know, as we went, Philippe, who was our chief negotiator, took a job as the, as a nice, it board member, and we were left without someone to play that role officially, and you know, I guess I'll let you and Elizabeth talk about why I was among the couple who sort of stepped into that role at the end, but I think it was in part because I was, you know, somewhat equipped at being able to think about the totality of all of our proposals in some, you know, collective sense, and think about what was movable and what was not, try to think about the underlying principles, not get stuck on any one particular proposal, but try to see what it was that we were really trying to achieve, and I think at the end of the day with Mike Lyons and with Elizabeth and with you, we're able to try to kind of jointly lead that contract to the end and get to the finish, and it turned out to be a pretty decent contract, you know. Certainly, in comparison with with the one that Jamie and Elizabeth were just talking about, it was, it was certainly a significant step forward.

Fred Kowal: 18:11

Mike Smiles, Mike Smiles, yeah, that's who it was from, from Farmingdale, and you didn't know him as well as Jamie, and I knew Mike, I mean, he was on guy, might have been on every team. It was an extremely unique circumstance, because, yeah, as you were saying, nice, it reached out, one of the caucuses reached out to Philippe, actually reached out to Jamie, and Philippe passed by me. Don't know why. Thank God, one can't pay me enough to be a nicer officer. I'm sorry. We think our membership is screwed up, but Philippe, Philippe wanted to take the.. it was a vice president's job, I think it was. Yeah, and then he moved into secretary treasurer. It's done a great job in those roles, but it left us with this uncertainty, and for a while, when he was a candidate, he was still functioning, and then at one, finally, at one point, I had to make the decision, consulting with Elizabeth, with you, Jamie, and probably with growing to Blackman Stroud, who was our treasurer at the time, and got all y'all advice, and had to tell him that, you know, I was going to replace him because he was going to be, even though he wasn't out of the bargaining unit, he really wasn't going to be able to do that job, and so Mike Smiles, who was like, I think it was like a deputy chief negotiator, formally took on that role, but it really became very much a small group of us working together on that, so let me get to the subject of negotiation teams, because that's who does a lot of the work, and all three of you depend on that. I do. I was on a team, I was on one team, I was never as directly intimately engaged in negotiations as you all have been. Obviously, as president, I've got to make a. Whole series of big calls towards the end of the game, but in terms of month after month, you all have way more experience, so I can say, and I consulted with both Elizabeth and Brett, now a couple times with Brett in the selection of a team, but Brett, when you look at the two teams you've been on, I'm just curious. I'm a social scientist. What's the personality type that works on a negotiations team, in your opinion? I'm going to ask all y'all that question, because I think it's the role of the team is so vital. I'm always asking Brett, where's the team on this? Where's the team? Are we good? So, what is it that you think makes a good team member

Unknown: 20:45

to my eye? I want people who are smart enough to be able to understand the complexity of the questions involved, like it's a, it's an enormously complicated process, and the details really matter, and being able to stay focused on those details makes a great deal of difference, but more important than that, I think, is a willingness to see the whole, to not be come attached to one particular kind of position within our unit, not only to be fighting for professionals, not only to be fighting for healthcare workers, not only to be fighting for adjuncts, and so forth, and that means having a certain kind of pragmatism about the way that you approach it, a certain willingness to hear hard truths when certain proposals are not going to make it, a certain willingness to be able to think about advocating for people who aren't like you in the process, and realizing that there is an opportunity here in this particular round to make gains somewhere else, and so you may have to drop something that you want. So, to my mind, like what I find difficult are the dogmatists, the people who get sort of dug into one idea or position or thing and can only really advocate for that one. To my mind the best team members are ones who are able to see the complexity and realize that in any given moment you may need to be pushing for something that may not directly be the most important thing to you personally but that is the most important and it is available for the union as a whole

Fred Kowal: 22:16

and we're talking about volunteers, right, Elizabeth, you're the pro, you're the one who has done this all these times with all the direct experience, the legal experience, and knowledge, and expertise. There are those, because I've gotten emails over the years. I shouldn't jinx myself, but I haven't gotten any emails this time around from individuals who say we shouldn't depend on volunteers, we should hire a couple of professionals like you referenced the consultants that Cuomo brought in. When you look back at your PEF contract rounds and the two for UUP, what did you see as the strengths of the approach that we use in terms of bringing in rank and file to be a part of this very complex process that Brett was just talking about, how complex it can be.

Unknown: 23:05

The I think of, particularly in these bargaining units, in the big New York state bargaining units, again, because the units are so diverse, the team needs to, on some level, reflect the diversity of the unit, so that there are voices for the various constituencies in the unit, and you know that's important to have those voices heard by the team. The team becomes a reflection, if you will, in microcosm of the broader bargaining unit, and it's important to have that in the negotiations, have those voices, particularly in team meetings. I like to say that, you know, 80% of the negotiations that you do is actually internally, it's working internally to develop proposals, it's working internally to assess what the primary concerns are going to be in any particular round of negotiations. It's working internally to develop consensus on how we're going to move forward, and having a team that is both able to speak for their own constituencies, but also I'm going to echo what Brett had, having a team that also has the ability to see those concerns in the context of a broader whole is extraordinarily valuable in the process, and if you, I'm not going to name rounds, but I have had an experience dealing with a team that completely imploded. Yeah, and it's really horrific, because then, as the professional advisor at the table, the attorney at the table. All you know, you lose the ability to stay in touch with what the concerns are of the team, and more broadly, the unit as a whole, and ultimately, in the particular round of negotiations I'm thinking about, was ultimately the president's call,

Fred Kowal: 25:17

yeah,

Unknown: 25:17

which is at the end of the day, that's where the buck stops, but you know it meant that he was dealing with negotiating contract without eyes and ears.

Fred Kowal: 25:30

The, we're talking about history, is that is that the contract with PEF that was voted down in terms of the ratification vote, because there was one. No. Oh, really? Who knew? All right now. So I got to think some more. So, Jamie, when you were chief, and for those in our listening audience, and I don't know how many of you know Jamie Dangler? She's such a nice person. I'm so not going to say anything ill about anyone. So I'm just talking about in general terms. You're in this tough round of negotiations with Cuomo and his minions. How did you prevent your team from imploding? How did it fracture at any time? Were there were there assholes that tried your patience, and how did you get through that? And remind me, because I don't remember how many years, what were we out 232, years? I don't really, you probably, it's probably seared into your soul. But anyway,

Unknown: 26:35

yeah,

Fred Kowal: 26:36

go ahead.

Unknown: 26:36

Yeah, I mean, we started our team process with all the member input in August of 2010 and we didn't sign a tentative agreement until February of 2013 So it was a very long process, and I think on both of the teams I served on that one and the one prior, which was a much easier round of negotiations. We just had really wonderful people. I just don't know what else to say. There were times where there were conflicts, disagreements, etc. And some team members play a larger role than others. There's no question about that. And you come as certainly as a chief negotiator to rely on them a little bit more, but if I can add something, I agree with everything Brett and Elizabeth said, but your mentioning Mike Smiles brings to mind another quality of a team member that I think is really important, and even though you have to focus on your immediate contract that you're trying to negotiate and the needs of the members, and all of that. I think a really good team member also has the ability to think beyond the current contract they're working on, to think about the longer term for you up members, and the fact that we have had a history, even though there have been backslides of progressing and moving forward, and that takes an open mind and creativity. So, and I'm going to quote Mike Smiles. I'm, it's not an exact quote, but I remember him always saying, don't let grandiose ideas blind you to the benefit of incremental gains, because when you can make a small game or you can beat back a bad thing that you then can build on in the next contract, and the one example I can think of, you folks have done so well in the last few contracts, I mean, in our contract again, everybody wanted salary steps. Our members wanted salary steps. It was made clear to us in multiple rounds by the state, you're never getting salary steps. And then we learned, you know what, but we maybe can get salary steps, but a different way, under a different name, under different processes. So good team members under are able to embrace that creativity of how can we get where we want to go, maybe in a more creative way to deal with the political obstacles that we may have, you know, from the state, and so, for example, in that really bad contract, we made one really important step, which is the only thing we had in terms of dealing with low salaries, salary compression was a $500 to base award for those who reached tenure continuing and permanent appointment, and a second five year term appointment for professionals, and the one thing we did in that contract was we got that 500 to base extended to other members, to contingents, full-time lecturers who were contingents, to people at athletic titles, to some people. And some other titles, so it was a small step, but actually many, probably hundreds, I don't know how many people benefited in that contract year, but more importantly, it broadened the scope of our members who were getting something other than percentage salary rates, and obviously you, you and Elizabeth and Brett know better than I how much you worked on getting that expanded to what you now have as retention awards, so again, I think the best team members are willing to understand that sometimes you have to let go of the gold, but you might get a silver or a little half of a silver or something that you know the union can build on, you know, and there are many examples of that over the years, and people like Mike, who had been involved in many negotiations, and there were others, understood that, and I learned an awful lot from those more senior members on the team, and their experiences, and I know members on the team, you know, newer members on the teams I served on, some of them didn't get that, but many of them did, and some of them continued to serve on, you know, the teams under your presidency,

Fred Kowal: 31:16

and I think that's ironic, because we were Brett and I were just doing a Zoom meeting with folks out at UB, and during the course of the conversation, I made the comment, and that is, you know, having this is my third contract as president, our third contract. What I wanted to tell them, what I did tell them is, you know, we build on things, and in the same sort of way, and I think it does take a while. I remember being on my first team, which was in 99 or thereabouts, and I was bright eyed, bushy tailed. I was on that team for one reason, and that is to address the salary inequities at the tech campuses, and that was my goal. I got to present to the state, along with a guy named Ken Callio from Geneseo, about we had the best model ever for step, and their response was,"Thank you, we're not interested. Made my head explode. How we were so reasonable, and it was so logical. And what the audience needs to understand is, we don't negotiate with ourselves. State might say no for really good reasons, or because they just don't give a shit. It can be either way. Brett, when you got on the team the first time, did you carry certain issues, and then now as chair, two times that you would admit perhaps motivate you more than others that are kind of like priorities, could you say what those are?

Unknown: 32:47

When I was the chapter president at Albany, one of my sort of principal initiatives was to undertake a kind of systematic review of contingent labor on our campus, and, and you know, it had been lingering in a, in a stagnant, entirely debased way for, for decades throughout the system, but at our campus, in particular, and so one of the significant undertakings that I did as chapter president was to do a full blown survey, a full blown report, we were able to kind of pull our administration into conversations, and we were able to move the dial a little bit, and it just happened that that report came out like a year or so prior to our 2016 round, and so we were able to kind of bring the gains that we had made in the chapter at that point, raising adjunct minimum salaries, pressing on some job security issues, and so forth, and other things to the table, and that became a little bit of a template for the ways in which we approach that question at the statewide table, and you know, in the in that first 2016 contract, we were able to establish a per course rate, it was a terrible per course rate, but we're in exactly what Jamie's talking about, incremental gains in the next contract. We were able to increase it notably, a really, a really big jump, and have now become competitive regionally with other big state systems, but the underlying issue of contingency has remained a primary motivating problem for me, I just think that the radical imbalance of tenure density between our academics and our professionals remains a crucial problem for not just us, not just SUNY, not just UUP, but higher ed in general, and it feels to me like the only way forward on this is union action, concerted union action, and I was thinking a little bit about your opening statement, Fred, about what collective bargaining means to unions, and the other piece that has, like, rung true for me in increasingly is that you know we think about collective bargaining as in bargaining for the collection of workers who are in our union. But I think it's also important for us to think about how we're bargaining collectively with our other state bargaining units, we have the weird idiosyncratic situation where we as state workers have contracts that pattern very, very closely after PEF and CSEA and the other state units, but also collectively in terms of higher education as a sector, as a, as a nationwide sector, and building on gains that are taking place in other higher ed unions, and really trying to fight back the overuse of contingency, which has just really redefined, and I think you know, horrifically undermined educational quality for the last several decades. So I'm particularly proud of what we've done, though I have to say I wake up every day thinking about it, and I really, really, really, really want the gains that we're fighting for now, and we're going to win some of them, and then the ones that we don't win, we're going to wake up tomorrow and be fighting for them again, and trying to just push that rock forward, but I have been gratified, super gratified, to have worked on all kinds of things that I think made huge differences in people's lives. Money, you mentioned parenting leave, there's a batch of other things that I think are really important, but the question of contingency, I think, is the one that stands out for me as the tip of the beer, and what I want to, what I want to achieve.

Fred Kowal: 36:18

Elizabeth, when you look back on your career, and then two contracts that you worked on here at UUP. Do you see your role as the expert on process as well as content, or do you also carry with you in that work the a attachment to certain priority issues, like what Brett was just talking about. Are there certain things where you say, 'Damn it, we got to get at, let's say I'm just throwing something out, you know, on call pay for those who work in hospitals. I'm just, that's out of nowhere. That just so, yes, yeah,

Unknown: 37:00

go ahead. Yeah, the I wouldn't have spent my life working in the union movement, first as a rank and file member, and then as a union attorney. I wouldn't have spent my life working if we're unions if I wasn't also personally committed to a lot of the issues that we grapple with, Jamie mentioned parenting leave, Brett mentioned, you know, issues facing contingent staff, not something I really had to deal with when, you know, in the PEF contract in the same way, and I remember being like appalled, yeah. when I started to come to grips with what the salaries looked like for contingent faculty and staff, it was something that I certainly became personally invested in, that said I can have things that I'm personally invested in, but ultimately, as an attorney for the union, my obligation is to advance the agenda that the team and the president are setting to the best of my ability, so you know absolutely there have been times in my career where teams made decisions that I did not think were necessarily the best decisions at a particular moment in time, but as an attorney at the table, I nevertheless have an obligation for aggressive advocacy on those positions, but yes, absolutely, there are things that I was deeply, personally committed to. I, we haven't mentioned it, but I retired right after, pretty much right after we finished the last agreement, and then after the initial implementation of the last agreement, and there are things I'm enormously proud of in that agreement, and really felt like I left in a good place, because it was a contract that I was really, really proud of, and part of it was the gains for contingents, part of it was the gain on parenting leave, talking about incrementally knowing that you're not just negotiating one agreement, you're never going to get everything and what you want in one agreement, but positioning the agreements one right after the other to try and advance an agenda over multiple rounds. You know, there are things we accomplished in the last round that had been things that UUP had been working on for decades. You know, it wasn't just our work on that team, it was Jamie's teams, it was team you were on, you know, that comes forward because the state over time comes to understand that there are issues of importance to the unit that are going to have. Have to be there in some form moving forward. It's never about justice and fairness. It's never about what's right or rational or smart. It's about power.

Fred Kowal: 40:12

It's what about, and it's

Unknown: 40:13

about the economic and political context in which we're negotiating, and every round is a little bit different in terms of having to make decisions about what we think we can achieve this time as opposed to what we might be staging for next time, and those are strategic judgments, and being able to see negotiations from that perspective, I think that's one of the things that having folks with deep experience in what the contract looks like involved in the process is important, because whether they're team members or professional staff supporting those team members, those are things that being able to understand how you're staging things to move forward is really important.

Fred Kowal: 41:09

It is. I'm going to assume that when you spoke of violently disagreeing with a decision made during a round of negotiations, it was not at UU, it was not all right, all right, but so, so I want to turn this around. I got to share a personal experience with, well, it was, it was in my office, but behind closed doors, Brett was there, and Mike Smiles. It was late in the 2016 22 round, we were, we were up against Cuomo, was the second one with, with Cuomo, and I want to ask Elizabeth, your impressions about the difference in the tone, as it were, because I think it was, but there was one moment, and it was late in the negotiations, and it was the one time in how many years have we worked together, I don't know, four or five, whatever, I don't know, it was the only time I saw you angry, and you were walking behind her, Brett, and the look on your face, there was a little bit of a smirk, and you were just shaking your head no, and you came into the office, you flung your big but the big binder down into one of the chairs, and a whole strain of expletives emerged, and Mike Smiles came in afterwards, and he was almost giggling, right? And I said, "Okay, so something bad must have happened, and that was what you were doing, Brett, you were doing the head shake, yeah, it's bad, it's bad. I'm not asking if you remember that particular episode, but if you look back over your entire career, and I ask all y'all this one, but was there one moment where you literally could have reached across the table and strangled someone, either on the other side or one of your own side, because they did something really stupid, but I think especially something from the other side, where you just wanted to explode for whatever reason, because that time you were really pissed,

Unknown: 43:17

so there are multiple occasions when I have been ripping mad, yeah, at state negotiators, usually it's been when along the experience that you had, which is it's kind of like, okay, but we're not interested,

Fred Kowal: 43:35

just dismissive,

Unknown: 43:36

you know, we did team trainings where we talk to the team about, you know, the state can be incredibly skilled at finding 52 different ways to say no and still say no, and just say no, and not engage on the substance, just say no, because it's not this is an issue that's not something that they think

Fred Kowal: 44:00

right

Unknown: 44:02

rises to something that's going to be in the final agreement, right, but nevertheless it's important to us, and one of the things that pisses me off more than, or pissed me off more than anything else, is arrogance of the state negotiators, the paternalism that the state negotiators bring to the table, about, you know, we know better than you about what your members want, and it's like, oh no, I don't even remember, it was there was a round where Joe Bress was at the table. It was the 2016 contract, and what frustrated me the most about that moment in time, it was, and it had to do with contingent salaries. That's right, talking about at the time, what frustrated me. The most about that was mr. Bress's arrogance and assumption that he knew better about what our contingent faculty needed, and the completely dismissive way in which he just wrote off our agenda at the table without even really understanding what we were proposing, and that's enormously frustrating for team members. It's enormously frustrating for professional staff at the table when it happens, but then it's the how do you go back, regroup, think about, you know, where are, because it's never going to be about the most righteous, most intelligent argument at the table. It's going to be where are the levers that you can pull to exert pressure? What are the ways in which you can bring power to the table, power to the political discussions that are happening with the state? That's what moves the agenda, ultimately.

Fred Kowal: 46:04

Jamie, in the years of, I mean, and you can tell a story better than I can, but it's almost legendary, you know. In your might have been the first session with the state where the state's chief negotiator, which was mr. Bress, came in and basically, or was in a meeting down in what is now my office, and he met with you and Phil, and Phil Smith, president at the time, and was basically handed a little sheet of paper, and this was it, take it or leave

Unknown: 46:32

it. Yeah,

Fred Kowal: 46:33

and so I'd love for you to reflect on that, but also, did you ever lose hope thinking, how do you deal with these people, and you, Elizabeth, were mentioned the arrogance. Was there ever a moment where you just were overcome with frustration? So, I guess it's that two-part

Unknown: 46:51

one

Fred Kowal: 46:51

is we go back to shock and awe, right, in dealing with that first meeting, and where do we go from here? But then the second thing is, was there ever a moment where you just, you know, you lost, you lost hope that you would get to as fair a contract as possible.

Unknown: 47:06

Well, on the first part of it, the very first time I met mr. Bress in Phil's office, and he, you know, we got the line, why you need to settle right away, they gave us a definite deadline by October 1, and this is the package, Phil was very calm and cool, as he always was. I didn't say a word, and breast never looked at me. I was convinced he had completely dismissed me. He wasn't even taking me seriously. So I would turn it around and say one of my favorite moments at the table, and you know, you take what you can get was with the first table session when he laid it out. We need you to sign. We'll get the paperwork, and the first words out of my mouth were I'm a little confused. And then I just launched into a critique of what he had presented. Now I will say I did not develop that on my own. I had excellent helps. Phil certainly knew what was going on. You may remember the late David Richter, who was certainly I worked so closely with him. So I think the first thing I had to do was establish we're just not going to do this, you know, we're just not going to do what you want us to do, and you're in for a fight. In fact, the first substantive fight we had was over ground rules, that was our history, you know. You establish ground rules with the state. What are the rules of engagement at the table, he didn't want any part of it. We wouldn't do anything until

Fred Kowal: 48:45

right

Unknown: 48:46

they negotiated gravity, so there were those fights, but I didn't get angry. I just took it as a challenge. The times I got angry, I mean, it was more toward the end, and I experienced everything that Elizabeth just talked about the arrogance feeling they, you know, they knew our members better than we did at the very end, and literally it was the last session was about a 10 hour marathon trying to get final pieces, and I won't say exactly what the issue was, but the F bombs just started flying, and it was both of us. I mean, I got so angry, and he got angry back,

Fred Kowal: 49:25

sure.

Unknown: 49:26

But I think the other thing that was interesting was he got angry a lot at us because we weren't playing the game, and we just kept pressing, and that was very angry for him, but I think I actually kind of like that, because I thought that when he loses it, that means we've pressed a button. So, how do we go back? And as a team, that team was wonderful. We had people studying every. Everything that was said on the other side of the table, this facial expression, what got them? Where might we have an opening? You know, so I took it more. I remember once he was so insulting to me. I mean, he just lashed this really insulting diatribe against me, and afterward people were like, he never, that's terrible, he shouldn't have done that. I was like, I'm really glad he did, because he's, he's pissed that we're not giving up, and I took it as empowering. Of course, the power differential was significant. We did not have the power in that case, but we didn't cave on everything, certainly, and we did get some things that were important, and we also saved worse damage. There could have been even worse damage, you know, if we hadn't held out. So, you know, yeah, anger was a part of it, but I think on both sides, you know, and I loved it when he got angry. I just thought, yeah, that's good, you know. I hope he doesn't listen to this. I loved making him angry, and did

Fred Kowal: 51:16

you know quite a bit. I always, to a certain extent, think of it as high stakes poker,

Unknown: 51:21

yeah. And I felt, too, that I had to keep a poker face. I really did. I would. I really tried to train myself in that, because I did not want to reveal weakness in my demeanor at the table. I was stone cold, looked them right in the eye, didn't stop doing that. I, I really put a lot of thought into how what my body language should be at the table, and I tried the best I could to adhere to that all the time, except that very end when the F bombs flew. I got pissed off and tired. We were exhausted, exactly an hour marathon. So it's interesting memories. It's an experience that you really can't adequately explain to anybody. It's there's so much we have to make judgments on your feet, but the support of the team and your president and staff who are involved in different ways. It was dead. We didn't have Elizabeth when I was negotiating that contract, but we had other staff who were very important to the process, and I couldn't have done it. I couldn't have made it emotionally and kept my frame of mind. I'll be honest with you, I drove home from Albany to Coral. There, I just cried my eyes out many times on the drive home because of the frustration of not being able to get what I knew we wanted and needed to get, but I never did that at the table. I don't think I ever did show weakness at the table, but you have to let it out. So I cried on the way home. You know what the heck,

Fred Kowal: 53:15

you know, having come in as president right after you had gotten a tentative agreement in February of 13 and a hearing the stories and from other team members and from Phil and then having to deal with the Cuomo administration when they were trying to shut down downstate early in 20 1314 and the countless fights we had with them I got a sense of what you experienced, because whenever we met with, you know, Cuomo staff, they were dismissive, arrogant, vicious, and I can't say enough about how the climate has changed with Governor Hochul. I'm not, you know, we don't agree on everything, and that's to be expected, but the tone at the table, and I'll ask Brett to, because he was on the team when Cuomo was still governor, and now with the negotiations last round, Governor Hochul was in, and now again, the tone, the approach is very different. There is, I think, it's one of two things, I think there is a greater respect for what we do. You mentioned Brett 2016 we went in with the kitchen sink, everything we're going, we were going to get everything, or at least fight for everything, but then in the last round, you know, working with you and Elizabeth, our demands were more compressed this time around because of the fact that we have a looming financial disaster next year, most likely coming from the cuts to Medicaid under the big ugly that we knew we were on a tight clock, and we also had to go in with very focused demands, which is why I expressly, and for another reason also, I wanted Brett to be chief, but. The I think there's also a power dynamic that UUP is more powerful than we have been in the past, thanks to a lot of work that's been done across the board with staff with members in the face of all out assaults, and so I think we're in a better place, but I want to ask Brett whether he has seen a transition in the tenor and the tone and going back to the 16 round through 22 and now,

Unknown: 55:29

yeah, they've, they've each become more genial with each round, for sure. It doesn't mean, I mean, a no is still a no right with with rage and and you know, you know these things eat you up when you're in the middle, so just for context for listeners, we're probably two weeks out from a tentative agreement on on our current contract, and I have to say, like I wake up at three in the morning and I'm thinking about stuff, and I wake up again at five, and then again at six, and it's all consuming because there are so many moving parts, and I think that I and everyone on our team cares so deeply about trying to achieve the ambitions that our members have have set out for us, so you know that intensity is always there, but it is absolutely the case that the demeanor at the table of belittlement and just trying to get under your skin, the baiting, the sorts of like the gamesmanship around an adversarial, like whodunit kind of lawyer bad show on TV, which, like, there were just a lot of gotcha moments that seemed to define the tenor of the conversation in those earlier rounds. I think that was less the case last round for us. It was certainly more convivial and serious, and trying to work through things, and I think this round has been an extension of that we have had substantive engagement from the start. I think part of that is due to the fact that we came in with an extraordinarily comprehensive, coherent package. We had done a lot of the internal negotiating ourselves to decide what are the achievable goals, how can we best frame them in terms that are within the state's ability to comprehend, and work, you know, there's all sorts of things that we want that we can say in political terms, but that don't have any bearing in state contractual frameworks, you know, and if you can't work within the structures that exist, you're fighting a double battle, you're fighting to achieve it, and you're fighting to somehow morph this structure that's in place for hundreds of 1000s of New York state workers across 50 plus years of contract bargaining, that's a double uphill road, and so I think our effort this time was to be as clear and concise as possible to frame our demands already in terms of, you know, existing state structures didn't mean that we were not asking for transformative, absolutely ambitious work-changing kinds of provisions, but we tried to get through the first 10 back and forth phases and start on 11 instead of starting at square one, and we came in with full language proposals on every single, you know, demand in our package, and so I think on our side the seriousness with which we prepared helped, and then credit where credit's due, on their side they're also interested in getting to a real deal, and while the arrogance, I'm just going to say one thing, I'm sorry to be a little bit long-winded here. The arrogance and the paternalism is real at times. On the flip side, there are some people on the state side that are extraordinarily competent at what they do. They run incredibly complicated bureaucratic structures that deliver services, and you know, something as simple as a payroll process, you know, to get that stuff sorted out on the calendars that they do, so that every member gets their $200 at the right date on the right time, and so forth, is extraordinary sometimes, and I think on their side, have to give credit where they're where credit's due as well in this round, that they have been extremely invested in trying to address the concerns that we have, and, where possible, by making administrative and logistical changes, and so forth, that are doable. They've been really, really helpful. And then, you know, there, this is this is the point of negotiations. We're labor, they're management. There are fundamental divisions. This is an employment relationship. We're not friends, we're not, we're not colleagues. They represent the interests of an employer. The employer's interests are fundamentally different than the workers' interests, and you've got to be able to work through those profound antagonisms to get to an agreement in which. We can make gains. They remain in their position as employers. I mean, we've joked about this many, many times. The only thing that's harder to wrest from their side than money, which, of course, they hold onto with ferocity, is discretion and power and management's ability to be management, to act as management, which means to act as a boss, and so you know those are real fights, and they're always going to be fundamental antagonism built in the structure. That doesn't mean that the tenor of any round of negotiation is going to take on the same kind of flavor,

Fred Kowal: 1:00:35

but you nailed it. With fundamental antagonism, we have different interests, and they play out at the table, we are up against the clock. However, your answer was not long-winded. It was actually a great segue, because what I want to tell our listeners is, in a few weeks, hopefully less than a few weeks, maybe one or two weeks, as you said, we'll have a tentative agreement. We're going to do a follow-up podcast with Brett and with Jeremy Ginsburg, who is in Elizabeth's role with this team in this round of negotiations, and we'll go into the process this time in some specificity, and then also in terms of what we were able to get in our tentative agreement. So I'm looking forward to that, but I do want to say this has been way too much fun, considering that I'm working and just to have time with Jamie Elizabeth and Brett and the great Mike Lisi, who's running the show, and Lynn for all their efforts. This has been just a lot of fun. It is. I will add one personal thing. It is incredibly none of you have been in the role that I occupy. I've been on a team being president is frustrating as hell during contract negotiations, because I don't have a direct role. I'm off to the side, and the temptation to want to.. you have no idea. None of you know how tempting it is for me to say no. I want to be in on this session. I want to be there, and to observe, I'm a social scientist, as I said, to observe, to be there, to make the points, but I trust Brett and the team implicitly, as I did prior teams, and certainly Elizabeth, and now Jeremy. Time will come when I've got to make some calls, and knowing that I'm going to get the best advice from folks like you all, that makes me confident that we'll end up in a good place, but in the meantime, on behalf of our 42,000 UUP members, thanks to Jamie for all the work that you did over the decades for UUP and its members, and for me in our time together as a good and dear friend, and also to Elizabeth for the years and the work that we shared, and Brett, for the work we have shared again on behalf of the our 42,000 members for the work that in your case, Brett, you have done and will do going forward. Thank you all, and thanks for this time. It's been fun.

Unknown: 1:02:54

Yeah, thanks everybody. Gracious, take care, Elizabeth, whom, whom I've learned so much from over the years, too. Yeah, real pleasure. Thank you for having us, Fred.

Fred Kowal: 1:03:03

Cool time.

Unknown: 1:03:04

Well, thank you, guys. I miss you all.

Fred Kowal: 1:03:06

Miss you too, Jenny.

Unknown: 1:03:07

Wise, Jamie.

Fred Kowal: 1:03:08

Take care.

Unknown: 1:03:08

Bye, bye.

Mike Lisi: 1:03:22

Bye. Welcome to Labor Look Back, where we take a look back at Labour's storied past, from strikes and uprisings to dynamic union leaders and huge union wins. We'll cover it all. Here's a look back at Labor history from the month of May. The

Unknown: 1:03:46

Great Depression left millions of able and willing Americans bewildered and jobless. In 1933 the federal government came to the help of local agencies, which had fought a courageous but losing fight against the growing need for relief. But the dole was not enough. Good sound men and women wanted to earn the help they got to hold up their heads to keep themselves from going rusty. Retail business needed their purchasing power to stimulate trade, and all over America, communities needed all sorts of improvements in public services, which had been cut off or postponed during the lean years when local revenues were pitifully low. The Works Progress Administration was launched late in 1935 as the key agency in the federal work program to employ able people from relief rows.

Mike Lisi: 1:04:30

Things were bleak in America in May 1933 The nation had hit rock bottom of the Great Depression. Across the country, millions of Americans lined up at soup kitchens and stood in bread lines for food. The unemployment rates it skyrocketed to almost 25% The industrialized states were hit the worst. The unemployment rate in Michigan sat at 37% between 1930 and 1933 New York's unemployment rate fluctuated between 20. Eight and 33% in New York City, a third of its workforce, more than 1 million workers, was out of work. Newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt dedicated himself to turn things around, one of those things to put as many of the unemployed as he could back to work, and Roosevelt had a pretty good idea of how

Unknown: 1:05:23

to do it. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing great, greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our great natural resources.

Mike Lisi: 1:05:55

On may 6, 1935 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 7034 which established the Works Progress Administration, or WPA, rather than putting unemployed workers on the dole, an early 20th century term for public assistance. The WPA would create millions of jobs for unskilled workers. WPA architect Harry Hopkins, an ex-social worker and one of Roosevelt's closest advisors admitted that the program was more expensive than simply handing out public assistance checks, but money for the WPA was worth spending. Give a man a dole, he said, and you save his body and destroy his spirit. Give him a job and you save both body and spirit, Roosevelt bought in big. He invested 4.8 billion, that's more than 100 billion in 20 $26 to establish the WPA. The payoff was almost immediate. The most famous of Roosevelt's New Deal initiatives, the WPA employed 8.5 million people from 1935 through its demise in 1943 At its peak in 1938 the work relief program employed more than 3 million people for an average monthly salary of between $41.50$3 WPA employees paved hundreds of 1000s of miles of road built, cleaned, and repaired public parks, swimming pools, and playgrounds, and constructed bridges, schools, hospitals, and libraries. The WPA also supported the arts, and by extension, 10s of 1000s of out-of-work artists. According to PBS, the program funded the creation of more than 2500 murals and nearly 18,000 sculptures, some of which still decorate public buildings across the country. The federal theater project employed unemployed actors, musicians, directors, and writers who brought live theater to venues across the country, giving many Americans their first taste of live theater. Writers were hired for the WPA Federal Writers Project,

Unknown: 1:08:07

which

Mike Lisi: 1:08:07

produced the American Guide Series, deeply researched guide books for all 48 states. Writers interviewed over 2300 former slaves, capturing their firsthand accounts. They interviewed Americans from all walks of life, they documented folk songs, regional dialects, and immigrant cultures. The horrific attack on Pearl Harbor on december 7, 1941 spelled the beginning of the end of the WPA. The US declared war on Japan the next day, and America quickly moved to a wartime economy. The need for weapons and munitions drove the unemployment rate to under 2% prompting Roosevelt to end the WPA in December 1942 The need for weapons and munitions drove the unemployment rate to under 2% prompting Roosevelt to order the end of the WPA in December 1942 Earlier that year, the WPA played a role in relocating Japanese Americans to internment camps in California. WPA personnel also staffed the camps, but by then the WPA had served its purpose and provided essential employment to millions during the Great Depression, helping to revive the country's sagging morale and giving meaning and dignity to those who put it to work. In his letter ordering the end of the WPA, Roosevelt wrote, quote, seven years ago I was convinced that providing useful work is superior to any and every kind of door. Experience has amply justified this policy. The WPA lingered on through early 1943 It ceased to exist on july 1 1943 Legendary folk artist Pete Seeger saw music as something much more than a way to entertain Seager, a singer and songwriter who was also a renowned banjoist, used his folk anthems to shine a light on social justice issues and bring about positive change, and he was a strong supporter of unions, Seager, who was born may 3, 1919 joined the American Federation of Musicians in 1942 He helped found AFM Local 1000 for touring musicians, and he was a member of Local 1000 and Local 802 for over 70 years. The New York Times called him a champion of folk music and social change, who was never comfortable with his stardom. Instead, he used his platform to call attention to the causes he was passionate about. In Seager's 2014 obituary, Times music critic John Peralis wrote, he sang for the labor movement in the 1940s and 1950s for civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam War rallies in the 1960s and for environmental and anti-war causes in the 1970s and beyond. We shall overcome, which mr. Seeger adapted from old spirituals, became a civil rights anthem as a member of the legendary Almanac Singers. Seeger wrote co co-wrote, adapted, and popularized timeless songs about unions and workers' struggles. Some of these songs: Talking Union,

Unknown: 1:11:32

Which

Mike Lisi: 1:11:32

side are you on, Step by Step, and Solidarity Forever.

Unknown: 1:11:37

A

Mike Lisi: 1:11:37

founding member of the Weavers, Seeger also wrote the war protest tune "Where Have all the flowers gone" in the mid 1950s Seeger was blacklisted because he refused to name names and answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. That refusal resulted in Segar being convicted of contempt of Congress in 1961 He was jailed for a short time. An appeals court overturned the verdict a year later. Seeger was an FBI target as well.

Unknown: 1:12:09

The

Mike Lisi: 1:12:09

bureau spied on Seger from 1943 through the early 1970s

Unknown: 1:12:14

but none of that changed his convictions, especially when it came to unions, workers, civil rights, and social justice. Here he is talking about the importance of unions in a 1965 television interview with a Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Real unionism attacks the whole broad problem. It doesn't become a narrow little protective association. I'm going to hold on to what I got and nobody else ain't going to get none of it, but it attacks the whole broad problem of unemployment, and it's a serious one. I'm shocked that in my own country I hear an economist say we have to have at least 3 million unemployed, or else there's too much inflation. We have to have 3 million unemployed. He might as well, if we say we have to have 1000s of drug addicts, we have to have 1000s of desperate, demoralized people who will go out and commit crime because they think there's no future in life. It's not necessary. I don't think it's necessary to have 3000 unemployed, no matter what this economist says.

Mike Lisi: 1:13:13

Pete Seeger passed away on January 27 2014 He was 94 years old. For Labor Look Back, I'm Mike Lisi. Now, here's Fred with Kohl's Coda.

Fred Kowal: 1:13:25

I really enjoyed doing the interview with my colleagues and yes, friends, because you know we've, we've been through the wars together, but also when we talk about unions and we talk about collective bargaining, we are literally talking about, as you heard several times, the guts, the heart of what unions are all about. Individuals in the face of management of bosses have very little power, and I'm sure all of us have experienced that at one time or another. The power of a union for an individual cannot be quantified, because we're talking about what in our case 42,000 people, basically, you know, a normal crowd at Yankee Stadium or Citi Field, so with that number of people coming together around a set of demands, that's collective bargaining, that's the collective strength that all of the members benefit from, regardless of what the salary increases might be, the protections we get in terms of job security, all of that, it is so vitally important, and I think that's an issue that is not emphasized enough when unions try to organize places that are not unionized yet. We know from public opinion polls, unions are incredibly popular. And a big majority of workers wish they had one. The key is the power of collective bargaining, the fact that you can get for yourself and your family great health insurance, good salary, job security, because all of you are acting in unison. Now, there's another aspect of unions that I think is important to notice and pay attention to. I spoke about this to our delegates when our delegate assembly took place over a month ago, and that is the fact that our union is so diverse in terms of the work that is done, where people come from, where they work, I think a union as diverse as UUP offers an example to our badly fractured country as to how people can come together despite their differences, political, ideological, profession, whatever the case may be, people can come together around a set of principles, like collective bargaining, like academic freedom, like fair pay for work. All of these important elements are held, regardless of whether you're a member of UUP who supported Donald Trump for president twice or three times, or if you're a Democratic Socialist, we have those common areas where we can agree, and I think it shows to the rest of this nation what we can be, hopefully once again we have to be to be able to come out of the present circumstance, where we're so divided and turning on each other. A union whose members turn on each other will die. Nations are the same, and so what I leave you with is the optimistic message that unions can and do make a difference in the lives of their members, but perhaps at this time, more importantly, they can provide an example to what our nation could be once again. Good night, and good luck.

Unknown: 1:17:16

The

Mike Lisi: 1:17:21

Voice Podcast is a production of United University Professions. You can find UUP on Facebook, Instagram, X, and Blue Sky at UUP Info. UUP is on the web at UUP info.org This episode was produced by Mike Lisi, Communications Director for UUP, UUP Director of Administration Lynn Alderman is associate producer. The host of The Voice is UUP President Fred Kowal. You can download the Voice podcast theme for free by going to United University professions.bandcamp.com and camp.com