How 1100 workers won union recognition in Oregon, USA

Sitting in the Mariott lobby along Beltline Road, it suddenly dawned on me that every piece of work I had done for 3.5 months would be tested, perfectly tested – no maybes, no special circumstances, no excuses – everything had been accounted for and planned for, either my systems would hold or they wouldn’t. That feeling of complete exposure and vulnerability was one of the most significant moments of my life. Fast forward 36 hours – at 6:34pm the text came through, everyone in the hallway cheered and started to hug each other, then we heard the roar coming from inside the count room. It was 28 May, 2015, and the service workers of Sacred Heart Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon had just voted 524-367 to form a union. The result was the largest union recognition victory in the state for two decades, and 1100 workers were now going to be able to collectively bargain with their employer for the first time. This is a short account of my experience working on that campaign.

I arrived in Oregon on 17 February after driving 1600 kms up from Los Angeles, having temporarily relocated from Switzerland to work for SEIU Local 49. By the time I boarded the plane I had been organising workers for 12 years, across 10 different industries, in both the private and public sector and spanning three countries. Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. Despite having success in much of my work, including many greenfield campaigns where workers needed to be organised from scratch, I felt incomplete. The catalyst for moving to Oregon was my decade long search for a belief I held, that there was another gear of organising out there, and if I looked long and hard enough, I might find it. It was during this campaign that I found that gear.

Forming a union is the United States is a very complex and challenging process; workers do not have the privilege of simply filling in a membership form. Unless a union already exists in your workplace – which is very rare – workers first need to win a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election before the employer will recognise the union and enter into negotiations. Once recognition is achieved, workers can sign up to the union and initiate bargaining for a first agreement. Even then, only 1/3 of such campaigns end up ratifying a first agreement. Recognition campaigns are incredibly challenging beasts that heavily favour the employer thanks to very outdated employment law, so much so that many unions have all but abandoned them as a core method of organising new workers.

The actual NLRB process goes like this – once 30% of a determined total bargaining unit sign union authorisation cards (or a petition), the union can file for an NLRB election. However, the rule of thumb is that you do not go into an election with less than 65% support because once the union files for election, the employer usually starts a very well resourced anti-union campaign on the inside. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) union officials have no right of access in a non-union workplace, so while the employer enjoys unfettered access to their employees, including mandatory intimidation meetings, the union must maintain support from the outside. This is primarily achieved by relying heavily on the strength and respect of workplace leaders. To win recognition through election, you need 50% +1 votes of those who vote. The only other way to form a union is to attempt to bypass the election through a process knowns as ‘card check’, which a union can do once 50% of total bargaining unit sign union authorisation cards. This method relies on voluntary recognition from the employer. Needless to say, nearly every employer will reject the request and force an NLRB election, knowing the odds are stacked in their favour.

So why did these workers want to organise? Sacred Heart Medical Centre on paper was tax exempt religious body thanks to their past actions of working with the church – however those days had long passed. In 2013 their tax records showed a profit margin in the tens of millions. They liked to paint a picture of a warm, kind medical facility that served the community, but in fact, most of the local area medical debt was owed to them. Their own medical insurance premiums increased year after year while covering less and less for workers. When their employees had an unplanned visit to their own emergency room, often the bills were overwhelming, so the hospital would garnish their own workers wages and end up bankrupting their employees. On top of that, they routinely functioned on dangerously low staffing levels in all areas. Emergency room techs were stressed and overworked, while cleaners couldn’t possibly keep the place as clean as they wanted to. Even hours of work were limited – the typical full-time week consisted of just 32 hours, all while staff were asking for more hours. A failed organising attempt in the late 90’s was the last time they attempted to organise. Come early 2015, the service workers of SHMC were in the best position they had ever been in, working tirelessly to reach enough support to force an election.

When I arrived in Oregon the campaign team consisted of 6 organisers and 1 lead organiser. I was in the last phase of resourcing where we increased to 9 organisers and a lead. Each of us had ‘turf’ that we needed to know inside and out. In this part of the world we would call this a ‘patch’. However, instead of a patch of workplaces, we had a patch of people and departments – and it was our job to know as much about these workers as possible (despite never being able to access them at work). Most importantly, we needed to be able to assess them against the campaign goal – did they want a union and what were they willing to do to achieve it? Thankfully, by the time I arrived there was very good existing information on my turf due to the previous organising done by the team, so I had a number of good contacts to work with.

Even though we had no right of access and could be removed from the premises by security or police, public hospitals are just that – public – so we could enter the hospitals fairly easily. Some organisers were spending a lot of time at the hospital and were ‘made’ by management early on, meaning they knew who they were, had pictures of them and knew their cars – so they couldn’t go more than 10-15 mins before security was onto them. Due to my past experiences organising greenfield sites I made the decision early to stay out of the hospital, instead I would rely on phone calls, carparks, workers homes and nearby cafes to access workers. Plus, I knew that when things got to a critical stage I would be able to move around the hospital undetected and I wanted to keep that card up my sleeve if I ever needed it. Turns out, I never did.

Recognition campaigns require long and irregular hours, although that’s a gross understatement. Our standard schedule was 12 days on, 2 days off, up to 12 hours a day. Each morning we had a mandatory 9:30am meeting where everyone reported their numbers and any progress made from the day before. We had two teams but this was only to differentiate who took weekends off, the idea being that when team 1 was off, team 2 was working, this ensured that we made progress every single day of the campaign. This would continue until the last month leading up to the election where we all worked 33 days straight, up to 17 hours per day and routinely 12-15, to ensure these workers had the best chance at victory. While gruelling at times, there was often down time during the day, however I did find it difficult to find my ‘off switch’ simply because the work was so relentless, and the breaks so short. Getting up to that speed can be pretty challenging, but once there I personally find it easier to just keep working, breaks kill rhythm.

Many times I laid in bed during the day with a clear 2 hours, only to get up and review our maps to find a line to someone. I even shared a flat with another organiser and we would routinely talk about the campaign in our kitchen while drinking copious amounts of coffee, while occasionally making time to watch the odd movie. Any other down time was usually spent doing laundry or laying in bed. I would probably best describe the feeling as being ‘on call’ because I always needed to be ready to walk out of any situation if that one person called me back or sent a text – just because that might be my only chance to connect with someone. As I explained to many people before I left, “I’m going there to have an experience, not necessarily a good experience”. Although I knew what I was getting into from my relationship with US organisers, I had never actually done anything like this so I had no idea how I would respond. Furthermore, I was coming off a 9-month break after leaving Australia so there would be a little ‘ring rust’ to knock off. Fortunately, this did not take long.

While the day officially began with our morning meeting, before that I might have made some calls or met with the night shift who were knocking off at 8am, although I would usually prefer to meet them at midnight.
We would report our data which consisted of how many workers we spoke to the previous day over the phone, how many 1:1’s we had in person, and any change in attitudes towards the union. We had 5 categories – leader, supporter, undecided, anti, unknown – and all of this was mapped and updated daily. While incredibly tedious at times, it ensured we were never caught off guard or unprepared. After all, good organising means no surprises.

Sometimes the meetings would include a short training exercise if we needed to get across something new, we would usually do this in our teams. From there, the rest of the day was ours to do as we wished. This was usually a combination of updating our mapping, making phone calls, meeting workers, developing leaders, relationship mapping, trying to find workers we hadn’t met yet, door knocking, preparing plans with workers leaders, etc… Most of all, I remember an extraordinary amount of time spent thinking – always thinking – about how to reach people. Sometimes I would call organisers in different parts of the world just to get some fresh views. One thing I noticed straight away was that I wasn’t experiencing the anticipated SEIU overly controlling horror stories often thrown around the movement. As detailed and coordinated as the campaign was I never felt anyone questioned my organising methods or approach. While our systems and strategy were not open for debate – that much was clear – they worked, so I never had any issues with that.

Sacred Heart Medical Center has two campuses and a small DC in a third location. My turf consisted of about 125 people in 5 departments spread over those 3 sites. I was responsible for Emergency Department Techs, Cleaners, and various areas of Distribution which all had different names. In each of these areas workers had identified a leader that people respected, and it was my job to get to know these people. Keep in mind that these ‘leaders’ weren’t necessarily pro-union in all cases, so it was important to build a genuine relationship with them if we ever expected to be able to move them. I had always known that workplace leaders were important however it wasn’t until this campaign where I learned just how important – without leaders it’s simply impossible to win a campaign of this size, with so many physical barriers. Organisers are sidelined; we never had the luxury of being able to run onto the field. Workers were the only people who could access their co-workers, have those critical organising conversations and keep everyone motivated. In previous Greenfield organising efforts I was able to overpower employers using access rights and outworking them – this wasn’t an option. It became clear to me that we couldn’t win without strong leaders, everything rested on their shoulders. Our asks on them were significant and had consequences, so we prepared them accordingly.

After what seemed like many weeks of building support, meeting people, mapping out the hospital, being stonewalled and hundreds of phone calls, it was time to start the petition signing process. This was the initial NLRB petition that would grant the workers a union election. We aimed to bring together hundreds of workers to our campaign office to kick-off the campaign with a bang. So on 9 April, 230 workers attended one of our 5 meetings and by midnight we had over 200 signatures in hand with another 30 worker leaders prepped and resourced to move the petition inside the hospital the next day. Our goal was 700+ signatures, or approximately 65% of the total bargaining unit (which at the time we estimated to be 1049). While there was no hard deadline common sense said we wanted to get this done as soon as possible. After all, momentum is always temporary.

As expected, we started out very strong and reached 500 fairly quickly. Also as expected, the remaining signatures were far more difficult to obtain. There were many workers who were casuals and worked only a few shifts a month, others who never crossed paths with one of our leaders and still some others who we just never found – ever. It was here when we started home visits, a process which we would continue up until the election. In campaigns of this nature it’s important to visit workers at home because it’s really the only place you can have some assurance of access, as well as have a safe conversation where the worker holds the power. I’ve never felt that having organising conversations in break or lunch rooms made much sense because when an organiser sits down next to a worker, a power imbalance exists. This is not a benign act as there is no worker agency, and it leads to many workers ignoring or retaliating against such conversations at work because they don’t want to be seen as union friendly and disadvantaged by their employer. Most of the time home visits go well with excellent conversations in my experience, however occasionally things take bizarre turns, such as the afternoon myself and another organiser were met with threatening language and a shotgun. Strange things happen on campaigns sometimes.

While the campaign continued to throw challenges at us, one thing was certain – we grew every week and got stronger. Granted, some days we went backwards and those days were tough, but overall our trajectory kept improving. This was possible due to the relentless asks on our Organising Committee – our group of worker leaders. They were the only people who were respected enough to inspire confidence and action among their co-workers. They carried their departments on their backs at times. As my contact with them gradually increased I decided to have a conversation with each leader and explain that as the campaign heated up I was going to need to speak to them frequently, perhaps more than once a day; and this would include many text messages. Keep in mind that I didn’t have a strong relationship with them yet, so I was seeking consent to contact them as needed when the time came. I didn’t want to be sitting in bed at 6am wondering if I could send a text, or swing by a worker’s home to pick up a petition at 10pm. I needed to know I had the agreement to do what was needed, at the time needed, when things turned on a dime. Those conversations can be difficult to have, but having them early on made a significant difference when the campaign peaked. It was a different type of inoculation, and probably the first time I had to inoculate workers against myself! The potential was there for leaders to crack as the pressure mounted, so I knew we had to talk about it long before we got to that point. My single greatest fear was losing a key leader close to the election – and this nearly happened.

As the petition reached 600 we really started to struggle, and the remaining signatures came almost exclusively from home visits. As we sat at 63% for a week straight, the decision was made to file for election short of the 65% threshold. While this may seem insignificant the local had recently lost an election by 6 votes with a bargaining unit of more than 600 workers, so yes – 2% matters. Once we filed the employer would know everything, and the retaliation campaign would kick into overdrive. Conversely, once we filed we would get a list of every employees name, department, phone number and address, which would be instrumental in finding workers we hadn’t been able to reach yet. Again, leaders were briefed and inoculated about what was about to happen, they were prepared and ready. At 11am on 6 May about 100 workers congregated upstairs at the main Riverbend facility to present our NLRB petition to management and ask them to voluntarily recognise the union and not spend precious hospital resources fighting us. As predicted, they refused to meet with us and the petition was on it’s way to Portland moments later to file with the Labor Board. Everything was out in the open now – it was on.

Within 2 days we had our election date(s), 27-28 May. The union had never had a two day election before however due to the size of the bargaining unit the NLRB insisted on two days. Another first for the local was the short waiting period of just three weeks, many of their past waiting periods were around 5-6 weeks. So for the first time I noticed our union leaders were nervous as this was unchartered territory for the local. Having a shorter waiting period would certainly benefit the workers because it limited the amount of time management could bombard them with anti-union rhetoric, however it also meant we needed to act faster than ever before. Getting the first NLRB petition done took nearly a month, and another petition was set to be launched about 2 weeks out from the election – the ‘Vote Yes’ petition.

One of the things my Organising Director said to me the first time we had coffee was “we know how to win in hospitals”. I found this very reassuring as until that point I hadn’t been a part of any organising where the strategy was so sound and trusted – it felt empowering. When I questioned her about not meeting benchmarks along the way, and asked when she would consider amending the plan, she said “we don’t, we will walk away before we change the strategy”. The message I got was clear – if we were able to reach each benchmark and achieve our organising goals, there was a very strong probability of victory come election day. However, many of these benchmarks were very difficult to achieve, and the next task ahead of us was incredibly intimidating.

At first I will admit I didn’t understand the significance of the ‘Vote Yes’ petition. I knew it was important to come out publicly for the union however what I didn’t realise was how critical the second part of the petition was – the vote plan. The petition served two purposes – to come out and say “I’m voting yes” and also to schedule a time and place where the worker would vote. We had a series of vote times in each hospital, spread over two days. Many NLRB elections are won or lost in the turnout, simply because the employer turns out 100% of the no votes, so we would have to try to turn out 100% of the yes votes and minimise those who flip due to employer pressure. Considering the employer could schedule people off on both days and some workers lived 45 mins out of town, we really needed to work this out – and fast. The first petition for election took nearly a month, when my Organising Director told us we needed to do this is 8 days I almost fell off my fucking chair – 8 days?

When I pulled my lead to the side and explained my concerns (I may have asked him if they were smoking crack) he said to me something I’ve said myself many times – that organising is problem solving, it’s about finding a way. This was not what I wanted to hear. However after fuming for a while and calming down I realised he was far more objective about our abilities than we were at that point in the campaign. Our team kept achieving our goals – the evidence surrounded us on a daily basis, yet being that close to it and never having much space to reflect made it very difficult to think straight at times. Regardless, I really felt this was unachievable. 8 days? 600+ signatures and vote plans? This didn’t even cover an entire schedule period, meaning key people could very well be scheduled off for 4 days or more during this time. Plus, many workers had two jobs so they weren’t sitting around the house waiting for someone to knock on their door.

What I hadn’t considered in that moment was that we were nearing our peak in terms of organisation. Looking back now I see this very clearly. The steady Organising Committee meetings, hours of leadership development, organising and turning out the petition launch day, moving the NLRB petition inside the hospital, daily coaching and our solidarity actions were all perfect preparation for this next challenge. This time when I sat down with each of my leaders and we mapped out a pathway for each department – they knew what to do. They knew their strengths and weaknesses, the likely issues and management tactics, and we planned around them. They had learned from the first petition what not to do, and they all had confidence they could get it done.

In addition to signing the vote yes petition, we also needed to know exactly how and when workers were going to vote. Each worker picked a day, campus and vote time, however what was unique about this plan was that we also asked them where they would be before and after their scheduled vote time. At first I didn’t understand the purpose in this and saw it as unnecessary, however I quickly realised that this was our last major obstacle before the election day so we had to know exactly where every one of our supporters would be during those two days. We needed a rock solid plan – confirmed and reconfirmed – plus a backup plan to get them to the ballot room. As an extra precaution, many of us tried to front load the vote times so that the vast majority of our people voted on the 27th, this ensured more time for follow-up the next day. Finally, we decided to not schedule anyone for the last voting block, leaving that completely open for those who missed earlier slots.

Each department needed to have ‘vote captains’, they would be the people coordinating their department and would keep track of everyone who voted – for me this was mostly my standard leaders. The plan I set out with them was for each supporter to text them once they voted, then they would text me a list of everyone who voted in the first half of the vote time, and the second half. The reason for this was that if someone didn’t vote in the first hour, leaders could find them and they would still have time to vote in the second hour. This also required accurate mobiles for each worker, which was something we had our leaders check a few weeks prior to the election. I can’t speak for others but my crew had 100% correct mobiles for their departments. Finally, we needed people inside the respective ballot rooms during the vote. The union and employer were allowed to nominate one person each to observe and a NLRB officer would also be present. These people were not allowed to write anything down or use their phones in any way while inside the ballot room, however once complete we could ask them who they recalled voting. This was another backup in case someone forgot to text their vote captain.

It’s hard to explain the intensity of those 8 days leading up to the deadline for the vote yes / vote plan petition. Our morning 9:30 meeting was now followed up with a ‘mid-day’ check-in, that meeting took place at 4:30pm and it was appropriately titled as we were working 16-17 hours a day. It’s amazing how much can be done in 17 hours when you’ve hit your stride and have momentum. I broke each day down into blocks of time and I set goals for each of those blocks. During this period I would meet with my lead 3 times a day (yes, three times a day) to discuss what I was doing to reach those I hadn’t been able to find yet. While incredibly tedious and frustrating, the list slowly dwindled, more and more workers were being reached and assessed as election day neared. I was constantly in touch with my leaders and to my surprise we were able to replicate the first petition participation rate minus 2 workers – both away on holiday. I couldn’t believe we made the deadline.

Somehow, in just 8 days those leaders were able to reach nearly everyone. Once we pulled this off I felt invincible, like we couldn’t lose, but not everyone was in the same boat in terms of replicating the first petition numbers. Our goal of 600+ signatures never materialised and this really concerned our Director. She kept driving into us the strong parallels between the vote yes petition and actual yes votes on the day of the election. I believe our maximum number on the ‘vote yes’ petition was 508 out of 1091 workers, and even less vote plans. There were probably around 80-100 workers who still hadn’t been reached but I can’t be sure. This meant if management was able to turn out all of the no votes then we risked losing the election despite having majority support inside (our peak support data was just over 700 workers). Towards the very end we had exhausted every contact option many times and the call was made about 5 days out from the election to abandon our organising efforts to gain more signatures/vote plans. We were to handover our data to the newly arriving ‘external team’ and focus 100% of our efforts into turning out the people we had. This would be the final push.

Our campaign office was then taken over by 40 organisers who came into town for the election. People flew in from California and Washington State, many drove in from other Oregon Locals and most of our Portland office was in town as well. They would be the ones driving workers to vote and continuously door knocking those who we hadn’t reached yet, and would aim to turn out our last minute supporters. This crew knew what they were doing, they walked in and grabbed their clipboards and just hit the ground running, many of them had been doing this for years. In all my years of organising I had never been approached by 4 people asking me what I needed, ready to work 15 hours a day, so I could focus on my priorities. Walking into that office and seeing everyone felt incredibly powerful, the instant cohesion of that group was impressive. We had a fucking army.

Finally 27 May arrived.

The level of detail in our GOTV was impressive, everything was planned out, down to mapping child seats in cars so we could drive workers with kids to the hospital to vote. As our campaign office had been taken over, our team was holed up at a Mariott hotel about 5kms from the Riverbend facility. We printed every vote plan then taped onto the wall according to time and date. As each person voted, we would draw a large black X over their vote plan. Those who hadn’t voted were photocopied and given to each organiser, we would then attempt to track them down and find out why they didn’t vote. This is where the vote plans saved the day, because workers might indicate a time and date they were voting, but they also indicated where they would be before and after the vote. This meant when we had ‘no shows’ we knew where they would be afterwards, this allowed us to make contact, rectify any issues or barriers and ensure they voted later that day.

As I waited for the first wave of vote confirmations to come through, I sat down at one of the tables in the hotel lobby with a cup of coffee. I just stared at my phone, waiting. I sat alone and just reflected. I was anxious. It suddenly dawned on me that every piece of work I had done for 3.5 months would be tested, perfectly tested – no maybes, no special circumstances, no excuses – everything had been accounted for and planned for, either my systems would hold or they wouldn’t. That feeling of complete exposure and vulnerability was one of the most significant moments of my life. Finally, around 8am the first wave of texts came through and I started to calm down. My systems were holding and everything was going to plan. Other organisers were reporting similar results. However, no one could shake the feeling of dread around the 508 signatures, we were all concerned and worked tirelessly to chase as many votes as possible. I knew that above all, I was responsible for turning out 77 yes votes – that had to happen. The upside of a 2-day election was that we had 7 vote times spread over 36 hours, that’s a lot of time to chase up pockets of workers, especially with 40 experienced campaign organisers waiting to jump on any lead we threw their way. I don’t think anyone slept well that night.

Finally 28 May arrived. The last thing I clearly remember was sitting in one of our regular cafes with my lead, the final voting block had commenced and entered it’s last hour – we could finally let go. I remember him saying “well it’s out of our hands now”. It felt good to let go, it was the first time I let go in nearly 4 months. I was feeling very emotional and completely exhausted, this was my 32nd straight day of work and I was only sleeping about 5 hours a night. Finally the time came to head over to the Riverbend site where the votes would be counted. I felt incredibly lucky that my partner was visiting me during this time and that I was able to share this experience with her. The count room was packed, the orders were clear – no organisers in the count room, only workers – this was their vote. Despite being told not to use phones the updates kept coming through. I kept pacing up and down the hallway, I couldn’t stop moving. Then I broke, the tears welled up in my eyes and I grabbed my lead, I said “what happens if they lose, they can’t fucking lose!” He looked at me calmly like he always did and said “Jim, if they lose then they’re not ready to be a union yet”. Just as I was able to regain composure the text came through – we won.

It’s hard to explain how I felt in that moment – what I do remember was the eruption of joy in the hallway, workers were shouting, everyone clinched the person next to them and everywhere I looked I saw tears of joy. As the count room emptied into the hospital foyer, the noise started to overwhelm security as they tried to quiet us down and stop us from filming. The final vote was 524-367 and our 524 was just over the anticipated 508 on the vote yes petition. It was never lost of me how organised we were despite constantly feeling overwhelmed by everything. Deep down I always felt that we were going to win, everywhere I looked I saw evidence of it, however I kept this to myself because this was my first recognition campaign and I didn’t have the experience others had with this process. During the final days, when our systems were tested, when numbers mattered, when leaders were pushed – our margin of error was under 4%. I reflected again on my Director’s comments on my first day…“we know how to win in hospitals”.

Later that night the local rented out a room at a restaurant, about a hundred workers attended. Speeches were made and more tears followed. A husband of one of my leaders approached me and asked “do I get my wife back now?” I responded by reminding him that his wife was a leader and people needed her. He was a big guy and nodded calmly before saying “I know”. During the early days this man would accompany his wife to our meetings, both were very sceptical and she wouldn’t do anything without his approval. However, big campaigns change people, they have the power to change everything, and on the evening of 28 May, 2015 we had done just that. We did something that many people said couldn’t be done anymore, won a traditional NLRB election through a comprehensive, genuine organising campaign. We beat the boss straight up through strong, relentless organising. No one can ever take that away from those workers.

I tried to never take a day of this campaign for granted, every moment of each challenging day I knew I was doing something worthwhile, something that really had the potential to change lives. Even the days when it felt hopeless, and there were plenty of them, a success story from another organiser or worker would keep me grounded and positive. The friendships I formed with my co-workers were incredible, and the bond I formed with leaders lasts to this day. When my daughters were born in April 2016, the fourth person I contacted was one of my leaders from this campaign. I’ve watched them get married, have children, walk away from toxic relationships and go on to new careers. Some became elected officials in their new union, others became organisers. They would go on to teach other groups of workers how to win by telling their story. This is what genuine organising is – workers fronting other workers and explaining their campaign, their story, what they faced and how they won. It’s a beautiful thing.

I knew it was going to be challenging to leave Oregon. Saying goodbye was very difficult because these relationships had become so strong and meaningful due to the intensity of the campaign. We had gone through a war together. However, I had turned 40 during this campaign and knew it was time to start our family, something my partner and I had been discussing for about 5 years. My last morning in Oregon was spent having breakfast with one of my leaders and her 4 year old son. I really miss this little guy, we used to play games and he loved showing me his baby ducks. He had an Uncle Jim so he called me “Jim who works a lot”. As we talked outside the Wandering Goat Café we reflected on the months of hard work, the funny moments, the setbacks and frustrations, the time she nearly walked away, and the moment we won. While sitting there and playing with her son it became clear to me that I might never have this experience again, nor anything like it. While this felt uncomfortable I also had come to understand the magnitude of what we pulled off. Of the hundreds of organisers I know around the world, only handful of my contemporaries have experienced anything like this. So if this was my peak I’m fine with that – I’m so grateful to have been there.

I was back in Switzerland a few months when I received a text message from one of my leaders – a worker I routinely butt heads with and had disagreements with when we first met. Someone who challenged me in public, highlighted my mistakes and resisted a number of my asks in the early stages of the campaign. A worker who once said to me “well you got me wrong, I wonder how many others you got wrong as well”. This was the same worker who made perhaps the most remarkable transformation during the campaign. The same person I would end up contacting just minutes after my children were born, the wife of the man who asked me in the restaurant if he would get his wife back now that they won. They had just started bargaining for their first agreement. The text read, “You were a wake up call for me, thank you for that. Now I have hope”. Genuine campaigns have the power to change people’s lives.

Then, from afar, I watched them win their first agreement. They ratified three days before the birth of my twin daughters. A perfect week if there ever was one.

Jim Meyer
Auckland, New Zealand
January 2019