Campaign Workers Of The Workd Unite!

February 27, 2018 11:57 AM

“Aside from improving wages and working conditions across campaigns, one of the biggest impacts of the CWG’s (Campaign Workers Guild) efforts could be establishing an industry-standard policy for dealing with sexual assault and harassment.“ 3 Democratic Campaigns Now Have Staff Unions. Why Not More? (In These Times)
posted by The Whelk (5 comments total)

This is long overdue. The progressive movement is lousy with organizations that take the attitude that every person deserves a job with decent wages and the dignity of sane hours and some ability to control their own working conditions, unless you work for a progressive organization, in which case you should count yourself lucky every day that they deign to let you work 12 hours for less than minimum wage. My first job out of college was for possibly the worst offender in this area, and I was shocked but not surprised when they recently came out against Obama's attempt to raise the wage threshold for overtime-exempt status.
posted by firechicago at 1:30 PM on February 27, 2018 [8 favorites]

I was shocked but not surprised when they recently came out against Obama's attempt to raise the wage threshold for overtime-exempt status.

Yeah I heard some dark muttering that the reason the Texas judge smackdown of the reform was not too contested is cause a lot of people on both sides benenfit from massively underpaid campaign workers
posted by The Whelk at 2:12 PM on February 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh god, this is SO FUCKING NEEDED. I have worked in and around politics for 20 years, but only once on an actual candidate campaign. That experience was enough to make me never want to work on another campaign as a staffer.

My boss sexually harassed all the women he managed (including making lewd remarks about my 16-year-old intern when she wasn't there) and I had literally no recourse available to me. It had been drilled into our heads that we were not to go over or around our bosses for anything. And there's a reason to have that kind of discipline on a really high-profile campaign, but it means there is no recourse in cases of abuse. I'm sure there was some form of HR (at least someone to administer benefits, etc. - it was a big campaign) but I didn't have their info or anything. And I was in a field office, working 70-hour weeks (below minimum wage, natch), so even if I did want to go over my boss' head, I would have had to put it in writing in an email, or just leave work in the middle of the day (totally not allowed) to drive halfway across the state and hope someone above him, who was miraculously sympathetic (of course everyone above him was a white campaign bro) was there that day.

When I did leave the campaign, I regretted for years that I didn't tell someone higher up before leaving. But in retrospect, they knew. His boss had worked with him before. Everyone knew. They just didn't think it was a problem.

So yeah, campaign workers need unions.
posted by lunasol at 4:20 PM on February 27, 2018 [8 favorites]

So yeah, campaign workers need unions.

Everybody needs unions.

And workers' councils. But first, unions.
posted by likethemagician at 7:28 AM on February 28, 2018 [2 favorites]

“Every campaign worker at a certain point has either joked about joining a union or unionizing their workplace.”

Yup. It was a regular topic of discussion in the campaign I worked on as a field organizer, which featured well over 100-hour weeks at below minimum wage, no days off, using our personal phones and computers, paying for our own gas, literally not having time to eat, and any complaints being met with "don't you care about winning this election?" At least I had my parents' home nearby to retreat to when I pretty much had a nervous breakdown - most organizers aren't so lucky.
posted by naoko at 8:41 AM on February 28, 2018