OUR UNION
1199 Welcomes Immigrants In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month in September, two members share their stories.
Ana Medina is an 1199SEIU Delegate and home care worker who emigrated to the US from Mexico as a child and gained her citizenship earlier this year. “The story of an immigrant to this country begins for various reasons, we come here wanting to sustain for ourselves and our families, not wanting to be a burden
“The story of an immigrant starts differently for each individual, but we are human beings who are just looking to live and contribute to the world.” – Ana Medina
Ana Medina, 1199 Home Care member from Mexico. Ramon Carmona, 1199 Social Worker from the Dominican Republic. 4
July-August 2023 2023 September-October
to anyone. But we have the title of immigrant which can mean being shamed, discriminated against, pushed aside and treated like outcasts. Many of us work tirelessly in conditions where there is often no union and therefore no fair agreement to receive healthcare and other benefits, even when we are contributing to society. Immigrants are sometimes seen as people who simply take from the US and do not give. I left Mexico when I was only fifteen years old, saying goodbye to my family and not realizing that it would take me years to be able to return and see them again. For some family members, it wasn’t possible to say goodbye to them, before they parted with this world. I hold the memory of them and all my years before fifteen-year-old me close to my heart. “When I first arrived here, I knew little to no English and had very few connections to receive help in any form, and I was dealing with the stress of having to take care of my two children while being a child myself. I was also experiencing domestic violence and constantly belittled and shut down when dealing with case workers regarding my situation and children, no one would listen to me even when everything was laid out in front of them. Years passed and I began to learn in small ways how to look out for my children and myself. I began speaking and understanding more English and attempted working many times before finding home care work
with an 1199SEIU agency, where the benefits helped me to get my citizenship. I met people in home care who would actually sit and understand what I was saying. Working in this field has allowed me to sustain for myself and grow as a person in so many ways that were beyond the imagination of fifteen-year-old me. The story of an immigrant starts differently for each individual, but we are human beings who are just looking to live and contribute to the world.” Ramon Carmona is an 1199SEIU Delegate and bilingual Social Worker at the Department of Behavioral Health in Washington, D.C. “My parents arrived in the U.S. at separate times before I was born to work and take a chance on providing greater opportunities for their children. Once the family gained enough money, they brought us here and we went through the citizenship process. We lived in the Bronx while they slowly worked their way up the ladder. We lived in a disciplined environment where education was of the utmost importance. I became one of the first of my family to attend and graduate college. By this time, I had grown to love the US while maintaining a strong bond with my native culture and native country. I felt we were achieving the American dream. Through my experiences growing up and knowing first-hand what it was like coming from basically nothing money-wise, I could empathize with those around me in similar situations needing help and advocacy to achieve success in life. It was one of the reasons why I believe I had a natural inclination to help others and eventually it was one of the reasons I decided to join 1199 SEIU as a Delegate. It was as if it was a natural calling for me to help others in need. One of my greatest hopes is to continue to inspire the next generation in my family, my daughters, to learn more about their Dominican culture, about the country’s history, people, customs, and maintain the same pride and joy I have for my beautiful native homeland.
Solidarity Matters Let’s not forget that 1199 is part of a larger labor movement. Worker wins in any industry benefit us all. The President’s Column by George Gresham
This past Labor Day, I got to thinking how so many people in our country give no thought to the meaning of the occasion. It’s the end of summer, time to get in a final barbecue, maybe get the kids ready to go back to school, or maybe just kick back and relax during a long weekend. Actually, Labor Day came about 140 years ago, when New York City’s early trade unions were fighting for an eight-hour workday and demanded recognition for the achievements and worth of the working class. Those achievements and that worth are still awaiting proper recognition. (The CEOs—American oligarchs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos— are celebrated in the media, which, of course, they own 365 days a year.) Especially this year, with labor organizing and ferment on the rise, and with public opinion polls showing 70 percent approval rate for unions, it is time we all showed our solidarity. A year ago, the big labor story was the explosion of new organizing by rank-and-file workers in chains and corporations like Amazon, Starbucks, Chipotle and Trader Joes. This year, a number of the bigger traditional unions— under new leadership—have confronted the country’s biggest corporations. Mainly because some of them are celebrities, the 160,000-strong strike of movie and TV actors now in its fourth month has gotten some national attention. Their 11,000 colleagues who write the scripts had just reached a tentative agreement at press time after being on strike since May. Typically, the CEOs who run the entertainment studios and pay themselves hundreds of millions of dollars to do
so, show little understanding, let alone sympathy for the writers, actors, crews and Teamsters who do the actual work. This summer, UPS was pushed to the wall by a threatened strike by 340,000 Teamsters Union members—it would have been the largest single-employer strike in US history—before finally settling a contract. In addition to substantial wage and benefit increases, including for part-timers, the contract gives the workers new safety protections. Truck drivers and warehouse workers are going to look at this contract and say: “I want my pay to go up. I want to be protected from heat hazards. I want to be treated fairly in the workplace.” This contract is a powerful indication that joining the union gets you those things.
Roughly 75,000 healthcare workers at the giant California healthcare system, Kaiser Permanente mounted a three-day strike in early October. Members of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West voted to strike over complaints that pay has not kept pace with inflation and understaffing has led to long wait times and the neglect of patients. Also dramatic was the fight of the United Auto Workers for a fair contract. The pay disparity between the auto industry oligarchs and the women and men who do the actual work is stark. Mary Barra, for example, has received more than $200 million in compensation since becoming GM's CEO in 2014. Barra was paid 362 times more than the automaker's median employee in 2022. "The CEOs gave themselves 40 percent pay increases in the last four years alone," United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain
We who do the work, who produce the goods, who deliver the services, provide the healthcare, never ever get the respect nor the compensation due to us unless we organize, unite and fight for it. said from the picket line. "And they want to call us greedy." Workers across the country are paying attention. According to CNN polling, 75 percent of Americans support the UAW and only 19 percent support the bosses. In the first half of 2023, the Big Three automakers made a combined $23 billion in profits— up 80 percent from the same time period last year. Over the past decade, these same companies made roughly $250 billion in profits in North America alone. That’s a quarter of a trillion dollars. Meantime, the average wage for American autoworkers has decreased by 30 percent over the past two decades, after adjusting for inflation. It's the same age-old story across industries—oil and chemical, pharmaceuticals, banking, retail sales, mass media or shipping or healthcare. We who do the work, who produce the goods, who deliver the services, provide the healthcare, never ever get the respect nor the compensation due to us unless we organize, unite and fight for it. “Power concedes nothing without a struggle,” Frederick Douglass wrote 150 years ago. “It never has and it never will.” We 1199ers know this well but it always helps to remind ourselves.
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