The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alight. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and I am very excited to share today’s episode with y’all because believe me as the editor in chief and co-executive director of an independent news outlet, I am painfully, anxiously and overwhelmingly aware of all the bad no good, awful stories that are just flooding our news feeds every single day. I know how debilitating and soul crushing it can be to be bombarded by the relentlessly depressing headlines here in the year of our Lord 2025.

But as an on the ground reporter who also gets to travel the country and connect with and speak to workers, organizers, and people of conscience everywhere who are standing up fighting for their rights and fighting for what’s right, I also know that there are so many people out there who have not given up hope. People who give me hope as they continue speaking up, fighting, organizing, making important gains and racking up real important wins in their daily struggles. And our mission here on Working People and on The Real News Network is to find those people to lift up their voices and their stories, to connect you to them and the movements for change that are taking shape all around us and to inform you on what you can do to get involved and be part of that change. And let me tell you guys something, I got to see firsthand that there are good people making good trouble and making change happen right now in the state of Minnesota for the past couple years now, my wife Meg and I have been honored to be invited to be guest educators at a phenomenal and truly unique program for union members and elected union leaders across the state of Minnesota.

It’s called the Minnesota Union Leadership Program or MLP for short, and it’s run by the Labor Education Services team who are housed within the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. And that’s small but amazing team of folks whom I’ve gotten to know very well and work with closely in recent years is also responsible for publishing the truly invaluable Workday Magazine. I mean, their editor in chief is the great Sarah Lazar, so you already know it’s going to be amazing, but they do in depth humane and worker focused journalism that covers labor issues and working class struggles across the Midwest United States. If you haven’t checked out Workday Magazine, but you listen to this podcast, I can basically a thousand percent guarantee that you will love it. So seriously, go check it out and go support them. And if you are a current or prospective union member in the state of Minnesota, I cannot recommend MLP highly enough.

And here’s how their website explains the program. Now in its 14th cohort, the Minnesota Union Leadership Program equips participants with the knowledge and skills to address the challenges facing working people and our movements through six in-depth sessions scheduled over eight months, participants study working people’s movements past, present, and future while learning together how workers succeed in building a more just and equitable society, emerging and established worker activist, build relationships and network with their fellow cohort members as well as others from the labor movement and other social movements. Again, if you listen to this show, I imagine that description will already be as enticing to you as it was to me. But then on top of that, imagine getting to spend two days in October in a beautiful idyllic cabin style setting out in the woods of northern Minnesota with dozens of union members and leaders from different unions.

I’m talking SEIU, afscme, the IBEW, the Teamsters and more as well as organizers and staffers from different worker centers around the state. And the whole time you’re talking in depth with each other about labor history, about the radical traditions and accomplishments of the labor movement. You’re talking about how to be an effective labor leader and you’re learning from others who are in the same boat in different unions and different industries. You’re talking about how organized labor can lead the way in confronting the most critical threats that working people face on and off the job today. There are labor film screenings and lively labor discussions happening around bonfires at night. I mean, that’s what happens at mlp and frankly, it’s fucking incredible and it’s one of the highlights of Mayan Meg’s year. It’s inspiring, it’s productive, and it is a much needed antidote to the ever creeping feelings of powerlessness and despair that we’re all feeling. To be honest, I wish thousands of programs like this existed all over the country, and who knows with your help, that could be the case, but to give y’all a taste of what the Minnesota Union Leadership Program and the people there are like, I took my podcast recorder with me this year and I got a chance to sit down with a handful of participants between our sessions and record some short interviews. Basically, I asked everyone the same two questions. First, I asked them to introduce themselves and talk about their path to mlp. Then I asked everyone what it means to them to be a union member here and now in this dystopian year in this changing country. Here’s what they had to say.

Mary Hampton:

My name is Mary Hampton. I am a community organizer with the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, and it’s a regional branch of the A-F-L-C-I-O. I’ve been organizing for about five years. I’ve been involved in the labor movement probably about eight years. I started working for Minneapolis Public Schools as a special education assistant in 2016, and it was important for me to find a job that was unionized because I come from a labor family. My mom was third generation welder for sheet metal worker, and my dad is a social worker with child protection with Minneapolis in Hennepin County for 30 years. And both of their families parents were unionized. My dad’s dad, he worked at General Motors in Illinois and was able to provide for his family. He had 12 kids, so he was able to take care of all of them with the union job. And my grandpa, he was a welder.

He actually helped create the duct work at the Mall of America that helps recycle the air in the heat and stuff. So I always think that’s kind of cool. But yeah, I thought that was important. I always knew some of this stuff growing up and getting opportunity to work a labor. I mean, a union job really changed my life just because of the money and the benefits. But there’s also still when you got your contracts comes up and things weren’t great, and I was like, well, what can I do? And I’ve always been the kind of person to just get in to do some stuff and an opportunity to get involved in something. And I just took on more roles because obviously when you’re in a union, you’re like, can you do this? Can you do this? I got on the bargaining team in 20 18, 20 19, and then after I was on that bargaining team, I got on the executive board. So I was on leadership. Then I was on the second bargaining team when Minneapolis MFT went on strike in 2022.

Maximillian Alvarez:

I remember interviewing some of y’all when you were on strike.

Mary Hampton:

I could see that. Yeah, there was just so much going on. It was crazy. It was a really great learning experience. Strikes are just transformative in a lot of different ways, and I think that transformed the work at MFT and in our membership and the power dynamic there. So that 20 22, 23 school year, I went on leave with MFT and organized, and that was, again, very transformative. I learned a lot. And actually during that time, I came to MLP as a panelist. So I was able to speak to people and also kind learn kind of what MLP didn’t. I was like, wow, this is kind of cool at that time. But then I realized you got to pay. And I was like, well, MFTs not paying for that. Not in a bad way, but they were like, yeah, we can’t pay for that. And so as I moved through my career, after I organized MFTA applied, I worked at the school one more year and somebody let me know that the MRF was hiring, and I applied and got the job, and it’s been up ever since.

My first day on the job there, I went on the strike line with Launa while they at the park, people were on strike. And it’s just been ongoing and it’s been a really great experience there too. I’m obviously very passionate about organizing. I really care about, I think I just didn’t even know it was something you could do as a job. Talking to people, I was like, wow, I’m so good at this. I love this. And so I’ve just leaned in and took every opportunity to learn. And I think somebody had came advertising the training and my job was like, you want to go? I was like, yeah. And so I signed up and I got accepted. You have to apply and stuff like that. So yeah, I love taking the opportunity to learn and meet people and just experience the things and I think it’s going to be an exciting opportunity.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Hell yeah. And I guess with all of that in your background and with all we’ve been discussing here at MULP the past two days, yeah. I’m asking folks, what does it mean to you to be a union member here and now in the United States of America in 2025?

Mary Hampton:

I’ve always really felt that being in a union is access. It’s a union, and the labor movement is an established place. It’s like an entity that has respect and that can move and things in a tangible way, especially in these moments where there’s a lot of aspirational movements, and that’s nothing wrong with that. But after you go to rally, now what? After you go meet for some community stuff now and then I think being involved in labor and being involved in my union gives me something to do with it. And your contract is so powerful, and I feel privileged when I live in Minnesota. We have so many labor rights and we have a lot of access to do a lot within our union, but being able to know that this thing can change when we want it to, and it can change my material reality in that moment, I can make more money, I can get a different experience at my job, and I get a say.

And a lot of these things we don’t have control over. I don’t have control over the military. I don’t have control over what the leaders are going to do, but I have control over this and it’s my union. It’s not the leadership. And I think about that when we’re doing all this work. There’s a lot of people in our spaces that think that the people that are elected are the ones that make the choices when there wouldn’t be, there wouldn’t be those people there without the members. The members are so important and with numbers is what power is. People is power. And I feel so strongly that in these moments where we feel like there’s not a lot of hope, there’s a lot of hope when it comes to this community that you build where power can actually change things. And even outside of just the contract, the political power that labor has and has had in the past is in a way not being used as we could because of so much.

There is so much power and influence that labor has that in these moments it could be so transformative. And I think we’re getting to a point in the labor movement where it’s bubbling, what are we going to do with this? And I think a lot of people feel the same way. And even if everybody doesn’t agree on how to go there, we have these places where we can have the conversation, go to a chapter meeting and bring up that issue. And like, oh, also say, I think with the union, it’s a place you can’t push me out of. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed to be here because my dues go into the work that’s being done here. This is my space. And having autonomy in that, especially as a black woman where people don’t really want my voice or they don’t want to hear where my vision goes a lot of the time, or they don’t necessarily take into account, I get to have control over that and advocate for the people that don’t necessarily get their voices heard. And I can make the spaces for people, like there is mechanisms for that. And I think that’s also really

Trae Boldthen:

Well. I am Trae Boldthen. I work at Fairview Riverside Hospital. I’m a psychiatric associate on some mental health units. I’m from SEIU, healthcare Minnesota and Iowa. I mainly work with pediatric patients, supporting them and helping them throughout their time while they’re in a crisis management situation. I’ve been doing this off and on now for nine years, and it’s been a wild ride, but I’ve loved every bit of it. I think really what brought me here to mlp, especially through our union, when I look back at our initial vote, to be honest, back in September, 2021 when we finally had our vote tally that day, we had a 98% yes vote out of around 350 people.

Maximillian Alvarez:

We call that a landslide.

Trae Boldthen:

Yeah. It was just so exciting and wonderful to see how united we were as a group, especially coming through in dealing with all of the exhaustion, fear and staffing problems we were having during the pandemic. Because prior to this, we had historically a couple failed union attempts in our position, but I think after that pandemic, it really pushed us into wanting to fight for not only protections for ourselves, but that win was also protections and safety measures for our patients. So when dealing with all of that and working with my fellow coworkers through the union efforts, and when they went through bargaining and want our protections and finally voted on our contract, it was just strong to be able to see all of us working together. And when I came back after some schooling, I joined in to be a union leader again and started helping in a different role this time of being able to push through grievances, helping support my workers in a different way that normally were kind of left up to a smaller individual of groups.

And I think after that initial push of that burning we had of the vote and in unionizing, we started having a little bit of a slipping of that. And I think that just happens naturally as things cool down a bit when you get that. And I wanted to join in to help reinvigorate that and also help with burnouts from our union workers and stewards that were already there. So with that, I’ve gone through several different trainings and it kind of led me here to mop to try to expand that knowledge and the tools that I can use to help not only with our local union but further as well.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And having gone through all of that to get your union and to be an active member and now representative of your union, what does it mean to you to be a union member here now in United States 2025?

Trae Boldthen:

I think a big thing that it means to me is just having a strong supportive community. I know that not everyone has that, especially with everything that is going on in not only just the world, but also specifically in our own country here. It means to have a group of people who are willing to fight not only for our own needs, but our needs that also care about our patients. A lot of those cuts that are coming down from the federal governments are directly affecting not only our patients who rely on Medicaid reimbursements and Medicare reimbursements, but they also directly fund our units in hospitals. And when we don’t have that kind of funding, our patients are put in danger. Our coworkers that I work with in our unions, we do suffer from that. And the nice thing is that we’ve been able to use our union membership together to fight for increased reimbursement rates on a state level, along with supporting each other and making a community that when things get tough, we can work together to keep ourselves and our patients safe.

Nathaniel Hobbs:

My name’s Nathaniel Hobbs, born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’m part of the IBEW one 10 Electrical Union. Before I got into electrical, I was working non-union for a machine shop for seven years, being a machinist, and I guess I was just working really hard. I was working tens for probably three years straight, just every day. And I was ambitious. I was good at my job. I wanted to go become a mechanical engineer, and I started paying my own way through school. I started asking the company for help to help me pay for school. It’s only going to make me more valuable worker. And basically he told me to piss off. And yeah, that was kind of the wake up call for me. I was like, oh, they just want me to stay in the same position, good at running all these machines, and they don’t see a value in me pursuing greater things and bringing my ambition to fruition essentially.

So that was a big wake up call for me, and I was like, oh, I need a union. And I always wanted to be an electrician anyway, ended up finding a route to make kind of a lateral move. So I didn’t take a huge pay cut right away with a non-union electrical shop, but the whole time I was like, I’m going to join the union, because I knew that boat wasn’t going to go float forever. But yeah, I joined up and it’s been the greatest decision I’ve ever made. Seriously. I think the biggest thing, the biggest propaganda point I’ve always had working, especially with machining, anyways, they’re going to stick you in front of a machine, and this applies to electrical or whatever else too, but they’re going to stick in front of a machine and you’re going to run the same part for your whole life.

And the whole idea was you’re not going to help you grow or allow you to pursue better things and stuff. And that’s been the complete opposite ever since I joined the union. You get exactly what you put into it. And every time I show that ambition and stuff, everyone’s super psyched to see it. And they’re like, all right, this guy wants to do more. He wants to be ambitious, and that’s not for everybody. And that’s fine. We will take everybody. We need more market share, the better and the better for everybody. So rising tide lifts all boats, right? But it’s just good to see, oh, I do get rewarded with hard work. It’s not, unions aren’t antsy. Hard work. A lot of people try to make it out to be, but yeah, so as soon as I joined, I was like, I’m going to every meeting, whatever.

I tried going to a meeting before I was even sworn in and they were like, whoa, all slow down, tiger. Yeah, let’s up plan this out a little more. And yeah, I got sworn in and I try to go as much as I can. I got my own family and stuff too. Things happen. You got to find time when you can make sacrifices when you can, but I think everyone in my local kind of sees that I want to be involved. I want to build this community to be stronger. And I think it’s incredibly important. I mean, we’re seeing the lowest rates of union membership in the last, what, a hundred years. And I think unionism is essential to the growth of the workforce, to the growth of the human race. And I don’t see any other way for us to claim our power other than through labor. And so yeah, that’s what kind of brought me, Tom.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and sticking with that theme, what does it mean to you to be a union member here and now In the year of our Lord 2025,

Nathaniel Hobbs:

Fortunately, I’m in a pretty awesome state. The state of Minnesota, we’re in a pretty good position compared to a lot of the travelers and such that I talked to that go all over the country or are even from, say, states like Arkansas and stuff. And their only market share is industrial because they need skilled workers and industrial, otherwise you have job site accidents, and that’s with electrical especially. It’s huge, the whole safety aspect. I hear stuff all the time and people getting hung up on 2 77, and we need very good safety practices and electrical because fatalities happen more than most industries and it’s no joke. And I think it’s important that we have the time to assess a situation, approach it in a safe manner, and minimize the amount of harm that may be done. And so safety is a huge thing too, as far as union work goes.

I mean, yeah, sometimes you got to pick up the pace or whatever, that’s any job, but I’ve never been rushed or pushed into a situation that I shouldn’t be. And I’ve ran into that before, non-union and even machining used to be the highest pain trade in the eighties and used to have a strong union until it got destroyed. And I mean, guys lose fingers, guys get shrapnel in their eye. All sorts of stuff happens all the time. And unfortunately, a lot of it is defense based too, which is, or defense, I should say, offense based. There’s a double think there, but that’s another reason why I’m really happy I’m not working for the Department of Offense anymore. But yeah, just stay strong in solidarity and do what you can for your community, try to get involved and it’s important. All that hard work pays off eventually.

Claire Mathews-Lingen:

I’m Claire Mathews-Lingen. I grew up in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and have been working at Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (CTUL) for three and a half years. We’re a worker center in South Minneapolis, so I’m in fundraising there, but have been in close proximity to our work with worker members and we support low wage workers of color around the Twin Cities. I also am in a grad program at the University of Minnesota Master of Human Rights focusing on labor rights. And there’s surprisingly little about labor rights in that program. So piecing it together and mop, I’m seeing as kind of a supplement to the lack of programming they have around labor. So I see it, yeah, part working well with my current job and then also the education I’m in right now and wanting to stay in this work in some form. Not sure if that’s at the worker center level. I’m also involved in my staff union, so there’s about 12 of us in a small staff union unit connected to the WA, the communication workers of America, and that’s been a good experience of seeing the inner workings of a union even at a really small scale.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and given your experience as a union member, but also being part of the labor movement through a worker worker’s center, what does it mean to you to be doing that work, especially given the specific nature of the work you do at the worker’s center? What does it mean to be doing that work in the year of our Lord 2025 in this country?

Claire Mathews-Lingen:

Yeah. Well, first thing that comes to mind is I feel like the staff union at SE tool is ideally walking the walk of the working conditions that we want people to have. So on some level, there’s that acting out the reality that we want within our small unit, doing what we can there. But then also, I mean, yeah, in the current moment, thinking about how we do really need the solidarity and the understanding of supporting non-union workers alongside building up union power. So that piece of say tool’s work has been really solid in the Twin Cities for, they’ve been around 17 or 18 years. So just thinking about the people that are often left out of the traditional labor movement and knowing that that needs to all be tied together. And we have a lot of union partnerships too, and support on that end, but also thinking about the historic hurt there in some cases of workers not seeing themselves reflected in the labor movement, but knowing that our non-union construction workers that we support and service workers and people who are in these sectors that are hard to unionize or impossible to unionize in some cases, that feels really important, especially right now when we’re being pushed by the mainstream to leave people behind and not be bringing everyone along as we fight up against what we’re up against.

Coming into my job at CTUL, I was kind of told the history of the worker center developing and learned that a lot of times there’s tension between unions and worker centers in different cities, but I think that that’s been really effectively challenged by CTUL and by the labor movement in the Twin Cities because we do work really closely with unions, but also know that we’re kind of in a distinct lane of work as well. So that’s been really positive to see and to know that there can be that level of solidarity.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Oh yeah, go support your local labor center folks.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, so I guess I’ll skip the name. So I’m an electrical worker in the IBEW and what brought me to mlp, I mean it was leadership that reached out to a number of us because I think they were trying to fill some spots, but I’m really glad I was able to go. I didn’t really know what to expect. I was really excited looking at the program because I saw that one of the first sessions, it named Racial Capitalism in the description, and so I was like, that’s awesome. When my training director reached out and said, there’s a leadership conference, I was like, okay, it’s probably not going to be that radical. The IBW we have in our international orgs constitution, there’s a whole declaration from the eighties that says we oppose all subversives, including, yeah, I mean it says nazim and communism, and I’m like, hold on, I really fuck with some of the subversive isms, so

Maximillian Alvarez:

I fuck with some of the subversive isms.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, I think we actually should be subverting a lot of this stuff. So I wasn’t sure how radical it was going to be, but I was really excited when I was reading the descriptions and I was really, I was pleased with the radical energy of the participants that showed up. It was also really interesting hearing from people in totally different types of unions because it was a good reminder of how little experience I have in just the context of the IBEW. I haven’t sat through any contract negotiations yet. I came in right after our last contract was agreed on, and I haven’t sat through a lot of disciplinary stuff or conflict mediation. And so it was interesting hearing from people going through that kind of struggle within their union and also just hearing about unions that have different structures than the construction trades with this really established union that’s really business oriented.

So yeah, it was interesting to be reminded of the different struggles people have just in the workplace working on teams with non-unionized employees and that sort of thing. So it was interesting too. Okay, so part of my deal is I started transitioning before I got into construction, and so I really didn’t, I was expecting to go into a hostile environment and I knew I was going to have to be undergoing this process of understanding myself and navigating that while also spending 40 hours a week presenting a different version of myself. And so that’s created some interesting dynamics, I guess in terms of building relationships with my coworkers. And sometimes that’s because they look at me and assume that I am going to agree with just some really fucked up shit they say, and it’s like, okay, yeah, I wasn’t going to feel safe around you anyways.

But I guess that’s just to say that it precludes me to being closed off in a certain way in the workplace, even when I’m talking about different struggles and stuff, which depending on the job site, I’ve been on some big job sites and I’ve been on some little ones in different contexts. I’ve felt different amounts of, I guess safety in being more in trying to push the envelope more. But whenever I’m talking about those things, when I’m trying to bring up larger issues with my coworkers, if I’m trying to agitate with them about, you have union siblings who are trans and stuff and you are going to have to make a choice, this choice is going to be asked of you, will you stand up for them? And it’s interesting trying to talk to them about that from when they’re receiving it from the perspective of someone that’s not necessarily connected to that

Maximillian Alvarez:

If it’s a theoretical exercise.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, I mean it’s kind of theoretical. There is at least one out trans woman in my local, and I had the privilege of working with her for a while, but it’s largely a theoretical thing for these guys. So yeah, I dunno. I had a lot of, on the big job that I was working on for a while, there were a number of conversations I had where I was really trying to push people to say, yeah, I mean, like I said, it’s like there are real choices that are going to be asked of you guys and your response to it should be obvious in terms of solidarity and stuff, but it’s not obvious for a lot of these people,

Maximillian Alvarez:

Which is such a sad reality because you are in that moment on that job site talking to your fellow union members. That is a pitch perfect example of what we’re talking about. It’s like if the labor movement means what it says that it is a place for working people of all types. Here we are in the same union and I can’t even be my full self with you, even though we’re all doing the same damn job. And if we don’t figure that out, we’re not going to get to where we need to go.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, absolutely.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I guess in that vein, everyone’s been given different answers to this question, but I’m curious what it means to you here and now in the United States in 2025. What does it mean to be a union member? Good and bad?

IBEW Member:

Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of different answers to that. For one thing, I have higher wages than I would in any non-union position if I was doing a non-union apprenticeship in my industry. And my benefits package is a lot better. And one thing I love about the IBW is I don’t have to go interview for jobs. I mean, as an apprentice, you don’t get, you’re indentured, and so you receive contractor assignments from your training director, so you don’t actually get to make choices about where you’re working generally. And people work things out sometimes, but that’s kind of under the table stuff. And you can be disciplined for if you go to your contractor and you’re like, I don’t want to work for you guys or something, you can get in trouble for that. But anyways, I hated interviewing. I hate LinkedIn, so that was a big draw for me, honestly, for getting into construction.

Maximillian Alvarez:

A hatred of LinkedIn can push us to do a lot of things.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, yeah. But I dunno mean, it also means, of course, I think there’s a huge responsibility because what good is building this collective power if we’re not using it to practice solidarity? And I think solidarity is something that, I mean, it’s a loaded term that a lot of people use in a lot of different ways. And something I’m just thinking about often is solidarity with whom and what are the actionable practices that, yeah, I mean it’s like solidarity is a practice. I dunno who said that, but because for a lot of my coworkers, I mean some of them, not sure they could pronounce solidarity not to be a bitch, but some of them it’s solidarity with electrical workers and some of them it’s solidarity with building trades. And so I guess the, my main thing for what it means to be a union member is just I see so much bad shit on the horizon and not on the horizon. Obviously stuff is really fucked up now and it has been for a long time. And also it’s getting worse and there’s more and more immediate things that are, there’s more and more questions that are being forced. People are being forced to be asked. And it feels like a lot of the sort of organizational attitude that I’ve observed in my limited time working in the union is just shortsighted. They don’t have a broad vision for navigating or resolving any of the broader contradictions or

Maximillian Alvarez:

Full on civilizational crises that we’re facing.

IBEW Member:

And it shows up in all these little ways. We’re really lucky to have a very well-funded private health plan as part of our local. And something a couple months ago I heard in a general membership meeting was one of the executive board members talking about, he was talking about issues in terms of the fund for that private plan. And it was really weird. He said something about, yeah, some people have really long hospital stays and he named one or two things of specific operations people were having or something. I guess mean. It felt just really weird to me because it was like, why, hold on, why do you know this? Also, can you see my claims for estradiol and shit?

But also it’s just hard to sit there and not, it feels like I can see all this stuff that they’re just not seeing. And I’m just like, do you not understand that we’re in a relatively stronger position, but this is something that’s affecting everyone who has to use any kind of health insurance because the whole health finance system is fucked up because of all of the basic ask logical consequences of the economic system we live under and we will not be able to, it’s like we’re on a sinking island in terms of my union having higher wages and our good benefits package and stuff like that. And it just feels like they’re not prepared and they’re not envisioning, they’re not only addressing what the real challenges on the horizon are looking like, but then they’re not imagining how we can take bolder actions to respond. Yeah. So I see that in our healthcare plan. I see that in, I mean obviously stuff with ice,

Maximillian Alvarez:

I mean, I’ve seen it talking to other IBEW members around the country who are working outdoors in Texas in record heat, but have no climate policy or members are helping to build data centers without the union thinking through the environmental impacts of these things kind of,

IBEW Member:

Right? And it’s just like, what do we build? Because I understand it makes sense structurally that our organization isn’t geared towards questioning the environmental impacts of the project. They’re trying to get approved so that their members have work. But obviously we need structures for that because I mean, yeah, obviously it’s just like again, how are y’all not seeing this shit on the horizon with the water usage and everything? And all they’re concerned about is we’re going to get a bunch of data centers and we’re going to be building them over the next 10 years. We’re going to bring in this many more apprentices so that we can staff the data centers. And I’m just like, okay, but what are we going to do when there’s hundreds of thousands of climate refugees who are trying to find safety in our state? What are we going to do when ICE is showing up on our job site? I mean, shit, I’ve worked with someone who’s active duty national guard, and that was its whole thing. Oh my God,

Maximillian Alvarez:

We’ll save that for another podcast.

IBEW Member:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve met a lot of interesting people in my work so far.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I guess just do you, maybe a final quick question. After being here at MULP with other union members and people in the labor movement, but from different sides, do you feel like we’ve started to answer those questions a bit better than how you’ve been seeing it in your own local? Or do you feel like you have more questions than answers at this point?

IBEW Member:

Yeah, I definitely have a lot of questions. And yeah, my eyes have been open to other questions. And again, like I said earlier, I don’t have a lot of experience in terms of, I haven’t been in the union a long time, not from a union family. And so I definitely have a lot to learn in terms of seeing contract negotiations play out and that sort of thing. And that’s all really helpful because I more, most of my self-education has been more overarching theory stuff, and that feels really empowering when I’m like, okay, that makes sense, Lenon. Yeah, I get why monopolistic capitalism tends towards this and wow, I feel it feels empowering and also so fucking frustrating that you laid out this dynamic so clearly and people are arguing about it right now and just missing basic points.

But then all this minute stuff is important too because it matters in terms of how when I show up to work, when I show up to hall meetings, how I’m imagining what, I guess that’s the big thing is that I’m trying to get out of this is imagining what actions I can take really to move us in any kind of direction that feels like it improves my chances of making it to retirement, not looking good right now. I mean, I went into this work being like, okay, it could be as little as a year or two before someone notices that I am growing tits and then pops me in the back of the head. Or maybe just the work environment becomes impossible. So yeah, I was pleasantly surprised though. I mean the first couple of months were pretty hard because I wasn’t really meeting anyone that was super visibly queer. Yeah. But after you start to find some community, and that’s been a lifesaver.

Cuahutemoc Rex:

Current name, Cuahutemoc Rex, what brought me here, local 28 22, council five president and vice president. What physically brought me here is one of the union members who drove me. I don’t have a car, don’t have a license. Why? Like everything else, A long story. And conceptually what brought me here, it’s family history and personal history, family history, father born 1907, Northern rural Mexico, moved to the US 1926, died 1980s and his struggles in Mexico and in the US mother born 1926, different part of northern rural Mexico, moved to the US in 1951, died in the 1990s. And interesting thing about father is, well, I don’t want to be too Freudian, but one of his last jobs was with WPA work progress administration, an FDR program bombing to Pearl Harbor, 1942. He was told by a nurse when he was in the hospital because he lost two inches on the left leg during a road construction, alley County road construction accident.

He was told by the nurse, listen, us is at war. If you volunteer to fight for the US Army, you’ll get automatic citizenship. His response, way too old to fight her response was the law doesn’t say anything about actual age. So he used but didn’t abuse the system, became a US citizen. Mother moved to the US in the 1950s under a tourist visa, worked for several years illegally, married my father. When Reagan did his tax reform stuff, she was forced to become a US citizen because of her marriage. And that was something a bit painful for her because I think she lost a part of her soul and I loving family, two loving, two controlling, two fearful. So I escaped a few attempts LA to Denver to accidentally go to college. Wasn’t planning to go to college that far away. Then a few 13 marathons in 18 months.

In the 1990s, a physical running away from family situation in la how one accidentally does a marathon different long story accidentally going to Thailand for 16 years as an English teacher, two years as a Buddhist bunk, working, living in Thailand legally for three years, working illegally in Thailand for several year for the last 13 years, about 10 years as an English teacher, two plus years as Buddhist monk. So the knowledge of being manipulated by being a hourly subcontracted worker, the tension of knowing that I was living and working illegally in a foreign country, not having the best knowledge of Thai accidentally becoming a Buddhist monk because of a deba lifestyle in Thailand. That’s what happens when you have too much power, not enough maturity in a different culture. And accidentally showing up in Minnesota, accidentally being homeless, accidentally living in shelters after I stopped being a Buddhist monk.

And the gratitude regarding gratitude of Hennepin, looking at my entire collective life, not just 20 years of my life, where earlier people that I was trying to get jobs with earlier basically said, you’re multilingual, multicultural, that’s great, but we can’t use you because as far as we’re concerned, you haven’t legally done anything for 20 years because we’re not checking. Hennepin County was able to look beyond that. So gratitude and loyalty to Hennepin County, but being a union paying member didn’t get me any real empowerment because I wasn’t doing anything. So I felt as if I was being nitpicked micromanaged by one of my supervisors. I point I feel because that may or may not have been true, but greater obvious involvement in the union, that particular manager backed off, did not micromanage me. I ended up doing better work because I was more confident and trusted my abilities more because someone wasn’t looking over my shoulder.

So the entire thing is that being obviously involved in the union gave me greater empowerment and improved my personal life, my mental life and my work life. So an entire aspect of growth, evolution, a holistic, but also kaleidoscope viewpoint on reality. Kaleidoscope bits of plastic in a machine, you move the machine around and same plastics form different patterns. So just my entire life experience has taught me how to, that when I recognize disempowerment in myself, when I recognize empowerment in my life and the ability to try to look at different realities at the same time, micro reality, larger holistic reality, conventional reality, and hopefully ultimate reality, what ultimate reality is, that’s a philosophical question. So we’ll just end that. The entire union experience has brought me greater empowerment.

Maximillian Alvarez:

And just on that note, what does it mean to you to be a union member here and now in 2025

Cuahutemoc Rex:

Again? Okay, well, in this case, starting with the word empowerment, but because of my personality, I see similarities to current US reality with previous US reality. Someone once said, history rhymes. It doesn’t repeat. I say that accidental view of time is linear. Oriental view of is cyclical, I view as time spiral. And I personally view McKinley the Gilded Age, similar to Ronald Reagan and lifestyles of the rich and famous view of reality. And I view Hoover and the great stock market crash and great depression. Boy, I currently view Trump current stock market high and what I think will be a crash and another great depression. So the US and the world overcame one situation about a hundred years ago. And I am hopeful, not confident, but hopeful that the US and the world can overcome this situation, not without of blood pain, heartbreak, but to quote an individual, the only thing reality can offer us is blood, sweat, and tears.

Rachel Bratager:

My name’s Rachel Bratager. I am part of O-P-E-I-U, local 12. I work for CenterPoint Energy. And I started by signing up to be a union steward that got me more involved with the union. They were looking for a representative on the board for public utility sector. And so I recently got sworn in to the board for that. And that first session they were like, anybody want to go to mt? And I was like, what is that? And the more they started talking about it and some of our other board members had the opportunity to come through this program, the more I was like, yes, please sign me up. And it’s been a really exciting journey. And the people that I’ve met here have just been across the board incredible. From the very first round of introductions that we did, I came away feeling like I am excited to talk to and get to know every person that I’ve heard speak thus far. And so it’s been a really great experience and I’ve learned so much both in session, but also from other union leaders in different fields, just in between at meals, walking around this gorgeous landscape and looking at the lake.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Yeah, it truly is an incredible, unique program. There’s nowhere else. I’d rather be, I mean, doing the work that I do to get the chance to come here and be part of this with all of you. Like you said, different union members, officers, different industries, different unions across the state, all together here in this beautiful setting, talking about labor history, labor strategy, and everything in between. It’s a really special place, mlp, and you guys are a really special group of people. I wanted to sort of ask the same question I’ve been asking everyone, which is taking in everything we’ve been talking about over the past two days, what does it mean to you to be a union member here and now in the USA in the year 2025?

Rachel Bratager:

I feel like being a union member today in 2025 is a precarious privilege. It’s something that having the solidarity with our union, with the members, both in my shop and across the local, we have privileges that a lot of workers in this country don’t have. We have stability and security that a lot of workers in this country don’t have. And I think that puts us in a position of privilege. But under this current administration and what’s happening in the world, it’s in a very precarious spot.