Labor & Employment Law

Teacher?s Political Action Leads to Union Organizing

By admin

Leslie Boyadjian (left), made the transition from teacher to political activist to union organizer.

Nora Frederickson, AFL-CIO Media fellow, sends us this union member profile.

As a junior high school teacher with the Albuquerque public schools in New Mexico, Leslie Boyadjian came face to face every day with the problems plaguing schools across the nation, like understaffed schools and families stretched too thin to give their kids a square meal. But it wasn?t until she joined the New Mexico AFT political program in 2008 that she realized the importance of political advocacy to the quality of education she could provide.

Education is a very frustrating field to enter. As an ambitious, engaged, interested person, I was frustrated at all the hoops you had to jump through for 35 years without doing something to make things better.

So Boyadjian decided to take action: She became a political activist.

This past election cycle, thousands of union members like Boyadjian took to the field in the largest grassroots political mobilization in the nation. In getting out the vote, many of the Labor 2010 volunteers and release staff also developed their skills as organizers, activists and leaders?and ultimately, reshaped their lives in ways that they couldn?t have imagined.

Now a project organizer with AFT in Baltimore, Boyadjian says her participation in the 2008 political program changed her perspective on political activism.

I had never volunteered before 2008. I knew that I cared about the union, but it hadn?t really occurred to me to be an organizer. After the election, I stayed involved. I realized how important politics were to quality of education.

This past spring, Boyadjian?s union asked her to be a zone coordinator and relocate to Hartford, Conn., for the 2010 midterm elections. There, she oversaw the field operations, amping up union turnout in Connecticut?s 4th Congressional District?home to some of the closest campaigns on the East Coast. The opportunity to lead left her both excited and nervous.

In New Mexico and Maryland, Boyadjian says, union members had never questioned her strategies, but there were times in Connecticut where she had to learn to stand her ground.

There are different philosophies behind organizing, and the ways that they organized 30 years ago aren?t the way we organize now. Folks who grew up with an older way of organizing sometimes have issues with that.

Ultimately, Boyadjian says she brought the union members around because of her ability to pick up new approaches to interacting with people.

In any kind of organizing, you?re always going to need to work with the person, and you?re going to have to make things comfortable for that person or they won?t work for you.? A lot of it is learning how to be comfortable with not knowing all the answers. 

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 14, 2010 (boomark / email).