Socialization

Key Takeaways

The Union must encourage and incentivize cross-departmental social events to bridge critical gaps in workers’ awareness of disparate working conditions across campus.
The Union must advocate and make space for tangible interpersonal relationships between members in order to concretize a sense of solidarity.
The Union should create regular union-wide social events so that members can consistently maintain relationships with members outside of their respective departments.

Statement

UAW 4121 (“the Union”) would greatly benefit from fostering more connections between workers but currently fails to create spaces for these connections to develop. Socialization can serve multiple purposes. For example, preexisting social ties can facilitate workers’ ability to learn about the conditions across departments and form connections that build power. Furthermore, workers who have personal connections with one another will show up for each other, inspiring solidarity that is more firmly grounded than that which comes exclusively from sympathy or principle.

The Union currently holds very few social events that encourage interactions between different departments. As a result, the average worker lacks knowledge of the working conditions in other departments, which can vary widely. This includes knowledge of whether their coworkers can expect summer funding; whether their coworkers’ funding typically comes from the university or outside grants; whether their coworkers are exposed to large, additional fees to maintain their employment; and whether their coworkers are on variable or base rate pay scales. UW’s academic culture is relatively insular with little incentive to interact with workers outside of one’s own department. To secure a strong contract, the Union and its members must be attuned to differences in working conditions, especially taking into account those who face the worst conditions. These knowledge gaps must be bridged if members are to fully understand what they are fighting for. One of the most effective and enjoyable ways to combat this ignorance is to promote and incentivize interdepartmental social events that provide a forum for relationship building where people can chat with one another without the structure of a meeting agenda. In addition to members sharing their working conditions, such events could foster real interpersonal relationships that bring lived weight to solidarity, which, as it currently stands in the Union, is little more than an abstract platitude. Organizing such events could thus significantly contribute to greater intentionality, awareness, and efficacy in organizing efforts.

In addition to combating ignorance of interdepartmental conditions, union social events can serve as effective member recruitment spaces. If large numbers of members attend a social, they have an opportunity to persuade their non-member workers to join them and sign up to pay dues. Additionally, social events boost the Union’s visibility. The mere fact of participation in these events therefore demonstrates union strength to members and non-members alike. A union which can boast a strong turnout at public and visible all-member events, including rallies and more socially-focused gatherings, is a union that better presents a credible strike threat. If such events are held in public spaces, at minimum, the resulting community visibility could raise the Union’s place in Admin’s consciousness.

Beyond this, the real connections that can be forged through such events can pay dividends in the form of increased solidarity and stronger social bonds. Consequently, the Union should begin holding regular social gatherings, as many other unions do. It is the authors’ belief that relatively small efforts to create such spaces will benefit the union to a degree that vastly outweighs logistical hurdles related to implementation.