5 Reasons Unions Matter

“My union is working hard to improve district curricula, which ignore the experiences of children of color, who make up 97 percent of our district,” says Alejandra Lopez, a second-grade teacher in San Antonio, Texas. “I’m also involved in a lawsuit filed by our union to keep one of our neighborhood schools from being taken over by a national chain of charter schools. The corporation hasn’t adequately supported its other schools across the country, and the district has never invested sufficiently in ours.”

“My heart goes out when I hear teachers say they don’t have the time to be advocates in addition to everything else they’re doing. I absolutely get that. I’m tired too,” says Louisiana teacher Kimberly Eckert. But, before you go quiet, think about how much you know about your students and their needs… and then think about how much policymakers and legislators don’t know. “We’re the experts of what it looks like on the ground, and I know if our voice is absent then our work is that much harder,” says Eckert. Use your union to elevate your voice!

“My students called me ‘Mr. Ross the Science Boss’ because I brought science to life for them and it touched my heart. The STEM lab closed in 2018 due to lack of funding. That hurt. But far tougher are the sacrifices my family and I have been forced to make,” says South Carolina teacher John Ross, whose starting salary was $30,000 and who worked part-time at Target to make ends meet. Together, educators have fought for school funding and fair wages. Consider the successful #RedforEd campaigns in states ranging from West Virginia to California.

“I originally thought I would go to college to become a lawyer, but in 2016, I went to the Washington Education Association’s state conference… I remember thinking, ‘Wow, they’re really passionate about education!’” says Price Jimerson, an aspiring educator. Today, she’s starting out in her career—and those passionate people are ready to support her. “Aspiring educators are just trying to figure it out. The nice thing about the union is that we have a network of support.”

“What has catalyzed all my work in my union has been racism and anti-immigrant sentiment,” says Karen Reyes, an Austin, Texas, preschool teacher. “A few educators have balked or complained about our social justice work. Some have said we should be focusing on better pay, health care, and working conditions. But social justice unionism includes ALL of that… We can’t focus only on the academic stuff if kids are dealing with so many other things. And how do we address those other things?”