No matter where you live, your job or your political beliefs, we can all agree on a few fundamentals: We all want to be able to provide for our families, pay our bills, receive medical care for ourselves and our families without worrying about whether we can afford it, be respected in our work and retire with dignity.
But across the state, workers are tired and frustrated with their ever-shrinking wealth and ever-increasing costs for housing, food, medicine, and other everyday needs. We turn on the news and see corporations and billionaires raking in record profits as prices rise. Our ability to create and live a good life isn’t too much to ask for — it’s the American Dream.
Yet, the American Dream is becoming further out of reach for so many workers in our great country, while CEOs and top government officials are raking in billions. Billionaire CEOs have iron-clad contracts with all sorts of perks and benefits, including “golden parachutes” that give them a windfall of cash if they are fired from their job for being bad at it. Worse yet is when these billionaires use their wealth to exert influence on elected officials at the local, state and national levels as they push laws that keep workers down and deprive our children of the public education they deserve, need and are entitled to. They work hard to divide us, to pit the middle class against the working class. They tell us that we should fear those who are a different race, religion, or who come from different places, those who look or love differently than us. They tell us it’s OK to question someone’s humanity as long as there’s a profit to be made. They know that when we fight each other, we are too distracted to fight against the real villains of this story.
But we know better than that. We know that our communities are stronger when we come together as neighbors. When workers come together in their union, they can fight for a better life and put the greed of the elite few in check.
As an elementary music teacher, I joined my union on my first day of teaching, even though there was, and continues to be, no requirement to do so. I joined because I knew the potential of teachers and staff joining together in their union. It gives us the protection to stand up for our students, to stand up for our profession and to stand up for our communities. Unions not only negotiate pay and benefits, but we also fight each day for safety in our workplaces, the same places that serve as learning environments for our students. When educators speak up about mold in the classroom, it is not just our health we are protecting, it’s our students as well. When we demand that a student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP) be followed, it is not just for our sake, but for the well-being of the student in our care. When we speak up about the Florida Department of Education threatening districts into hiding teacher and staff vacancies, we are doing so because our students are not getting the education they deserve and need. When professors and graduate assistants speak up about the threats to academic freedom, we do so at great risk and because millions more will benefit from it. When we fight for us, we fight for all of us.
The same is true for all unions, whether it is the electricians and plumbers who fight for better standards and training to protect homeowners and businesses, or the city workers who fight to make sure that our water is safe and clean, or the countless other unions in our state who keep our towns running. The American Dream is central to unions across the nation — it’s what we fight for every single day. Unions are not only more popular than ever- they are needed now more than ever.
When unions are strong, every worker in America wins. The only ones who lose are the billionaire elites who look down on us. The holiday may be over, but the fight continues — together we must keep organizing, keep fighting and carry the spirit of Labor Day forward every single day.
Andrew Spar is president of The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest association of professional employees.
