[Editor's note: This article first appeared at the Higher Education Labor United blog.]
In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis was carrying out Trump-style attacks on higher education before the 2024 election, the United Faculty of Florida, a statewide union, gathered organizers from various chapters and joined with other unions to hold a Worker’s Forum in Miami Springs, facilitated by the Miami-Dade DSA. – Editor
From Chris Robé, Professor of Film and Media Studies, Delegate to HELU, Vice-President of United Faculty of Florida, Florida Atlantic University
United Faculty of Florida (UFF), our faculty union, represents more than 25,000 full-time faculty members. During our union’s inception in the early 1970s, it intended on representing all campus workers. But by the time the bargaining unit was defined, only full-time faculty were included.
It is high time to revisit that bolder strategy of organizing all those sectors associated with higher education as HELU has proposed in its bold “wall-to-wall, coast-to-coast” strategy. This inspired a crew of us in Florida to hold our own statewide organizers meeting from various UFF chapters. Coalition building continued more recently as the chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach facilitated the South Florida Workers’ Forum on May 31st in Miami Springs at the AFL-CIO hall.
A few of us from various UFF chapters participated and attended with other members from the Communications Workers of America, UNITE HERE, Starbucks Workers United, Association of Flight Attendants, National Association of Letter Carriers, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, American Federation of Government Employees, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, WeCount!, and many other organizations. A little over eighty people were in attendance.
The day consisted of four panels that addressed issues of: building union power; forming a union; fighting against state repression; and organizing for migrant justice. Between four and five people, each representing a different union, spoke briefly about each issue. Spanish translation was offered for those speaking exclusively in Spanish. Sub sandwiches, drinks and chips were provided in the back of the hall throughout the day.
I have written about this event more extensively in my blog, Dispatches from the Academic Trenches, so I will only highlight two inspiring moments during the forum. During the panel on forming a new union, Michael Baez, a flight attendant, mentioned that he was charged with assessing all five-hundred flight attendants’ attitude towards forming a union within his hub. He was the only organizer. Yet one could see in his friendly, upbeat disposition, he was the perfect person for the task. With a wide smile on his face, he informed us how he tried to raise fellow workers’ class-consciousness on flights while they engage in “jump seat therapy,” a term used to describe the way coworkers bare their life stories to each other out of earshot of customers while sitting across from each other during moments of rest.
Jairo, a construction worker who belongs to WeCount!, an immigrant-led workers’ organization, recounted in Spanish his efforts to make construction sites safer. He stated at one point: “We came here with suitcases in our hands in the pursuit of the American Dream. Instead, we find bosses trying to shortchange us and creating unsafe working conditions.” At the end of his talk, he held up his two calloused hands saying: “Remember: these are the hands that helped build Miami. These are also the hands that are building the union.”
It is hard to imagine a more difficult task of organizing workers after the end of a long shift working in construction or on a flight. But these workers served as testimony of doing so. Those of us in academia, where we set many of our own working hours and can use our site of employment for recruiting, have a rather privileged position compared to these other workers.
The opposition is counting on us staying siloed, keeping our heads down, and trying to wait all of this out. But as these speakers at the South Florida Worker’s Forum emphasized, we are all involved in this fight regardless if we acknowledge it or not. The only remaining question is: do we want to fight to strengthen our and others’ communities, work in coalitions and develop friendships and strategies with one another; or do we want to keep taking blows, time after time, day after day, year after year, until we ultimately no longer feel anything at all?
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