On Cold Mornings and Hope for Others
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been campaigning at worksite gates for a candidate hoping to become the next Director of our United Steelworkers Union’s District Ten (Pennsylvania). It’s a bit of a struggle to get these old bones out of bed to greet working people at 5:30am in the “invigorating” cold air of a November morning. Yet every American ought to be given the privilege of doing it. It is the most honest human to human contact two strangers can have. And it’s the educational experience you can’t get anywhere else.

Early in the morning, people don’t have their game faces on. Whatever uniform they project in their lives, hasn’t yet been buttoned and zipped up. The conversations are short. A couple of minutes at best. Your message has to be concise. And then, if you’re doing it right, you listen. Intently. Because that’s where the magic happens.

Sometimes it’s a retort. Sometimes a nod. Sometimes a complaint. All are openings to understand more about what people, in essentially an unguarded moment, want, hope for and are pissed off about. SSometimes you feel good and sometimes you cringe. Always, you realize that there is so much more we need to do to bring the work of our leaders and the hopes of our members in sync. It is a snapshot. For those who want to understand and make things better, it’s a necessity.

These days, all the social divides of the nation are reflected in these short mind melds. Politics, the economy, respect at work, family pressures and more. Often, it’s a rare opportunity for a member to send a message to leadership. The trick is, as one old hand advised a crew of us the other day, is “don’t take the bait”. If a member takes a shot across the bow, engage, ask questions, dig deeper. If you show someone you actually give a shit about them, they become candid and both of you can have a learning moment. In this world of bumper sticker slogans and hardened position-taking, a simple honest conversation is worth gold.

You also have periods between shift changes where you have some time alone to actually think about the conversations. Nothing to take your attention away from what folks have told you. I often come around to a truth. Your hopes for people can only go as far as their hopes for themselves. The best conversations are with those with energy and optimism. The most difficult are with those who have been beat down and believe where they are, is all there is. The woman who tells you she just lost her mother and faces Thanksgiving alone for the first time. The worker who is enthusiastic that the new owner of his Plant is investing money and improving worker relations. The kid that just got this, his first decent paying job, two weeks before. The “old head” who is counting days until retirement. Each views the world from their vantage point. That’s where the union has to meet them.

From these conversations we can build a better union. We can figure out where the gaps in understanding are within our organization. We might be able to solve an individual problem or two and uncover a larger issue that’s gone unrecognized. We can work to improve leadership and get key information to our members. But most of all, handing that leaflet is a human connection.

It means something to people, who get up early every day and make that cold trudge into work, that your there. That their union made the effort. That they matter. That act alone may just raise their hopes, rekindle some enthusiasm and bring our hopes just a little bit closer to our members. And that, my friends, means that if you do this, you’ll get a reward that is truly priceless.

ihg 11-24-2021
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