“We are the union.” Up until recently, this has been nothing more than a cliché tagline —something that I read about in the paper. It was usually accompanied by an article talking about workers wanting more money, better working hours or conditions. To be honest, I never gave it much thought. I’ve worked for San Benito County for a little over two years. It’s a wonderfully tight-knit community with a flair for tradition and strong roots.
However, its employees have gotten restless.
You see, San Benito County has grown a tremendous amount in the past decade. Homes are popping up like apricots in your nearest orchard; the schools are overflowing with young, strong-willed Balers. The only thing that hasn’t grown in the past ten years, the wages. I talked to co-workers that have been here substantially longer than I have, and they all have the same concern. “The cost of living has outpaced our wages.”
San Benito County workers have received a 3 percent increase in the past eight years. In a county where a two-bedroom apartment costs $2,000 a month, they literally cannot afford to work here anymore. Every year they are pushed closer and closer to having to leave their jobs for neighboring counties, such as Monterey, or Santa Clara. Forced to commute on a two-lane highway where 25 miles turns into an hour-and-a-half commute. Or worse, moving out of their childhood town, uprooting their children from school, friends and family, just to make a living wage.
It’s through these conversations with co-workers that I would think back to those paper headlines. “Workers Strike.” I dug a little deeper and did some research into some of the other benefits of a county employee. Surely, they were being offered premium healthcare options to compensate for the low wages.
What I found was nothing short of heartbreaking: A 220 to 270 percent increase in the cost of healthcare over the past six years. What does that look like you might ask? $609.50 a month for a family plan. I won’t dive too deep into the mathematics over it, but let’s just say some workers are paying 30 percent or more of their total monthly income for insurance.
I felt like someone punched me in the gut, but I needed to press on. I attended a union meeting during a crucial time of negotiation. It was in that meeting that I saw the faces of the people those newspaper articles were talking about. Not the disgruntled worker pining for more money, but the mother who struggled to pay for daycare, the father who couldn’t afford to buy lunch, and the many workers who qualified for the low income programs that they help the community apply for every day. It was in this moment that things began to become clear to me.
The union wasn’t some entity that was just their to take dues, send a flyer and accept the next contract that was proposed. It was each and every one of us. It was that same mother, and that same father that sat next to me in the room. It was that office assistant (making $11.97 per hour) that greets the clients every morning with a smile. It was the social worker that made a long healthy life possible for a small child. A newspaper title flashed in my head again — “Union Unites.” This would be the lasting impression that I take with me going forward. This would be the message that I would help deliver; the union isn’t what I once thought it was. Its strong, its relentless, its hope, and it is this way because, “WE ARE THE UNION.”