Posts Categorized: Community

Myron Coguox works at Food 4 Less and is a member of UFCW Local 324.

I spent my GOLD internship working alongside Jobs with Justice in Atlanta. The overall goal of the summer was to help motivate people to organize and have a union voice on the job to help them improve their jobs and lives.

When I arrived, I knew very little about the South and it was sometimes difficult for me to reach people within the community. I come from California and found Georgia to be quite different from home. This experience has opened up my eyes to how difficult organizing can be inside a right to work state.

I spent a lot of my time canvassing a community called East Point and it was challenging. Beyond being perceived as the “new” person in town, what made my job particulary difficult was the fact that East Point is an exceptionally conservative community. The people I met weren’t always so receptive to labor unions. To overcome this, I would always share my personal experiences to help establish trust. If they trusted me, they would be more likely to talk with me about how together we can stand up for more jobs and better wages.

Working in Georgia made me realize how much working people suffer. Areas with low incomes and few jobs are in desperate need of change. This summer taught me that the best way to bring that is for people to band together both inside and outside of their workplaces.

I’m looking forward to going home and sharing everything I’ve learned with my local union. Most importantly, I won’t take the strength of our solidarity for granted.

Jewel-Osco Pharmacy workers in Clinton, Iowa, have voted to join UFCW Local 431. The 16 workers decided to come together to join UFCW Local 431 to be able to negotiate a fair and systematic way to solve workplace issues, secure schedules, and improve wages and benefits. Several workers have been working at the location for years without a pay raise.

“It was important to us to have a say when it came to our jobs and our work. Now that we are part of a union, together we have the strength to make sure that our voices are heard and we have the power to make our jobs better,” said Kathryn Jaeger, a Jewel-Osco Certified Pharmacy Tech.

An overwhelming majority of the workers voted to join UFCW Local 431 despite an anti-union campaign from the employer. Workers were able to stick together despite the anti-union messaging thanks to meetings and face-to-face conversations with UFCW Local 431 members who are retail food workers in the same store.