Eugene V Debs, Canton Ohio Another fun recent encounter with my union: I tried to update my address with the hall. Got voicemail, despite having tracked down the right office/extension (it isn't obvious), and despite having called during business hours. Decided to be the squeaky wheel, and suggested that maybe we should be able to update our address online. It's 2018. Said it might be nice for all the part-timers who don't make shit and have to move every year chasing low rents. Pointed out how shitty our participation rates were in the last election, might be nice to get more ballots into the correct mail boxes. Got told to call the union hall during business hours to update my address. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯Well, for myself, I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses—you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
My union uses unpaid interns to answer the phone, send out mail, and generally do stuff. The secretary makes a journeyman rate of $72 an hour. A friend was asked by my union to fly to Washington DC and do sound on a Union production about the greatness of unions. They asked her to pay for her own ticket, and told her that since it was a union production about unions, they couldn't afford to pay her a union rate. I got screwed out of about eight thousand dollars and approximately 600 hours because when I wrote "lynnwood, WA" on my change of address card their unpaid intern assumed that couldn't be right and changed it to "Lynwood, CA" because why would a Los Angeles union sound mixer move to Washington? So they didn't give me the secret handshake instructions to be a Los Angeles union member, even though I was effectively the union boss on the production. So instead I ended up being dragooned into the National IATSE organization, which is such a dumpster fire it makes my union look like Seal Team Six.