Last week, I began a month long series of posts on the past, present and future of labor unions highlighting their growing influence in government at the the local, state and federal levels.
 
I have made a career out of being on the “other side” of union politics and have decided it is time to understand why they have so much influence. Therefore, this month long series is unique because it is told from a uncommon perspective.
 
After last week’s post, The Future of Labor Unions which you can review below this post, I received numerous emails and have decided to welcome our reader’s point of view in my series of posts on this topic.
 
Elizabeth M. Sturgeon, Ph.D. is a native of North Long Beach and a Assistant Professor of English at Mount St. Mary’s College. The value provided by labor unions has impacted her life, both personally and professionally. I wanted to know her story. She wanted to tell me:
 

Why We Need Unions
By Elizabeth M. Sturgeon, Ph.D.
 
Are labor unions passe, a niche movement, out-of-step in a competitive global economy? I say, “No.” And let me tell you why by recounting a few key events in my personal history.
 
Although I am now blessed with a good job at Mount St. Mary’s College, most of my life outside of Academia I have worked at non-union jobs. Since I don’t have the personality and charm to wait tables, I took the retail route when scanning the “help wanted” ads. From Disneyland to The Broadway to Borders working for my brother at Cargo West and then Luna in Belmont Shore, for most of my life I have tried to get by on less than $10 an hour, a luxury wage in our global economy where Walmart pays workers in China pennies an hour to make trinkets and accessories I can purchase for a couple of bucks. Like Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickle and Dimed, as a single woman with no children, for even $10 an hour I could not get by without financial assistance from family and friends.
 
Indeed. My fantasy of financial independence would seem like a vain dream for my grandfather who, without the support of either a union or family, worked 6 days a week, 10 hours a day in a shoe factory in London, Ontario, Canada when he was only 11 years old. According to my grandfather, half the children working in the factory were under 15 years of age. Because unions fought and won the battle against child labor, I, unlike my grandfather, had the opportunity to finish school, eventually earning a Ph.D., now using my mind to teach in a college instead of slaving away 60 hours a week sewing soles onto shoes in a factory.
 
Unions have also provided avenues for career training and social advancement for workers. It was the Carpenters’ Union apprentice program that gave my father his first career. Like so many of our young people today, the academics of reading and writing were not his “intelligence”, to borrow Howard Gardner’s term, but construction, building things with his hands was his special gift. Through the Carpenters’ Union apprentice program, my father was able to become a Master Carpenter, eventually teaching those skills his brother who, over the course of 30 years, built a virtual city of houses and apartments in Sumner, Washington.
 
Providing my father with the opportunity to develop his skills in carpentry and then credentialing his expertise, unions inspired him to go to college and become a teacher. Eventually, he enrolled in community college when he returned from the Korean War, earning a M.A. and teaching credential. He then taught elementary school for thirty years in LBUSD, where TALB, the Teacher’s Union of Long Beach, protected his job and made sure he could feed his four children.
 
More recently, I can thank the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, for keeping food in my ‘fridge. Because unions fought and won the right for part-time, temporary community college instructors to be classified as seasonal workers, when I was an adjunct community college instructor, I was eligible to collect unemployment when not teaching.

Ehreneich has said that minimum-wage workers are the greatest philanthropists of American society: their exploitation and skills are the foundation of the U.S. economy. I would go even further. In a global economy, where production and services are outsourced to benefit the bottom line, non-unionized workers are the greatest philanthropists of the modern age.
 
If unions don’t protect us as workers and provide avenues for advancement, then who will?

Elizabeth M. Sturgeon, Ph.D., a native of North Long Beach who has survived her fair share of non-union jobs, holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance Literature from Northwestern University and teaches English at Mount St. Mary’s College.