Trading a Husband for A Union Job: A different kind of Security For Single Mothers

After I filed for divorce, I looked for a union job.  As a single mother, I knew I wouldn’t be able to survive and put food on the table otherwise.

I needed it for retirement and insurance. It’s one of the few places where you can get health coverage.

My mom was a hippie midwife who raised me on a commune; when I was a kid, she used to tell me that I needed to work for the grocery stores ‘cause that’s one of the last union jobs you can get.  I grew up poor.  I just knew in my gut if I didn’t have a union job, I’d be repeating it again and again.  

Before having kids, I was a state employee—a clerk. Then I was a stay-at-home mom for many years, and went through a bad separation. It’s been hard, but it’s shaped me,  it’s made me strong and independent, and it has kept my faith

I knew that after going back to school, I had to get a state, county or union job.

I started out as a temp working for CSEA (California State Employee Association), then SEIU hired me as secretarial support staff.  I’m a member of the UAW. Then when they started the “Change that works” campaign I had an opportunity to apply.  It’s been a huge class change going from a secretary to an organizer.

Belonging to a union has given me a decent wage; women in unions make 29% more than non-union women.

It also gives us security and empowerment; unions are one of the last places where women can have collective bargaining rights.  We have rights and freedoms.  

When you see massive layoffs, you don’t see too many union members going to unemployment lines. In a private company, you can be fired at will-- they can fire you right then and there.  You have no grievance process.  

If that happens to me, my landlord is not going to understand. As a single mother, I need job security.



Membership gave me health insurance.  My three children are covered until they’re 23.  After that, I’m scared for them.

The women in Unit 15 are janitors, and they have pride in the work that they do.  I don’t know how you can put that into words, when you’ve seen people who’ve put down for so long. They feel a part of something that protects them; every Wednesday of every week, and they wear purple shirts to support their union. You see these women become stewards and presidents, and they don’t have to have college degrees.  

In recent years, the percentage of union workers has gone from 39% to 7%.  That will keep up, If the people still allow corporation to destroy America.   Unions are the way we can rebuild the middle class.

For me, joining a union was upward mobility; it’s given me a life I never thought I could have.

By Jessica Garcia as told to Amy Cross