Union Plus Story Booth: Union Members Tell Their Stories

by James Parks, Sep 15, 2009

One exhibit that’s drawing a lot of interest at the AFL-CIO Convention is the Union Plus “Tell Your Union Story” booth, where union members are videotaped telling how or why they got involved with union activities or what a union means to them.

The booth is sponsored by Union Privilege, which provides consumer benefits to members and retirees of participating unions.

“We want to help tell the union story,” says Jon Ross, vice president of Union Privilege.

So many people don’t know the union story. We want to help spread the word. Every union member has a story about why they became a union activist or how unions help their community. We wanted to capture that.

We serve union members all the time and the booth is another service.

Union members like Ernie Esposito, a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) who remembers as a child seeing tears well up in his father’s eyes because he was unable to provide food for all the 12 members of his family.

Once I got an opportunity to work in a plant that was unionized, I made my mind up that I was going to do things to never let things like that hurt any single person in the United States of America.

Or Working America member Kathryn Patt, who said the nation’s crisis with health care, the mortgage mess and job loss were constantly at the forefront of her mind as she thought that somebody ought to do something to improve workers’ lives.

Then I realized I was somebody and this was a way I could actually do something about it. So I started to learn how to canvass.

Check out excerpts from some of the videos on our convention website or on Union Privilege’s YouTube site here. After the convention, the videos also will be available on Union Privilege’s website here.

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