I work for a birth to three agency in Seattle, Washington as a speech therapist and spent the last year organizing to unionize! We’re a private non-profit who gets contracts from the state and local school districts to provide early intervention services (although we call them early supports here) to kids with disabilities in their homes. We’re a multidisciplinary agency so we provide PT, OT, mental health, resource coordination, nutrition services, etc.
I’ve been working for almost four years now and last year decided to try to unionize my workplace! We were seeing a ton of burnout and people leaving. Our wages were also “frozen” during COVID and then did not keep up with the 9-11% inflation here in Seattle. Our management was making decisions about virtual vs. in-person without consulting anyone and basically refusing to provide any actual information behind things. We were fed up!
Long story short, we unionized! We partnered with UFCW 3000 and won the vote in January. So far, we’ve determined we’re the FIRST birth to three agency in Washington to unionize. We’ve found one other agency in Ohio, too at this point but we're one of the first few in the nation!
We’re now starting to bargain for our first contract. Management was NOT happy and the bargaining team has already started to face retaliation. If you want to follow along our story, we launched our social media pages at Early Supports Union on Facebook and Instagram to try to gather more public support and dissuade them from retaliation.
For those of you who have gone through a first contract and unionizing process, what advice do you have for me? What strategies have worked for you? Any books/podcasts to listen to about bargaining?
We're excited to join the union workforce and represent the proud history of labor unions in Washington! #unionstrong