By GSU staff rep Mason Van Luven
I was fortunate enough in April 2022 to have a quick yet impactful exchange with the remarkable woman, organizer, and trouble-maker, Jane McAlevey (‘Mac-a-levee’), who recently lost her battle with cancer at the age of 59.
A close friend and mentor of mine lent me a copy of Jane’s first book, “Raising Expectations and Raising Hell” (2012) which laid bare how she organized private healthcare workers in Nevada against hostile corporations, their sympathetic politicians, and the power struggles she had within her own union. It was evident that these workers were underpaid, overworked, and expected to provide quality healthcare in a company that made billions cutting costs to maximize profit.
Back then, I was not a union staffer. I was, however, beginning to think more deeply about working-class struggles, and how so few of us were ever told that we have the power to demand more. Looking back, her book – and the strategies she took to organize these workers – made me realize how contradictory organizing for power can be: on one hand, it is as simple as setting aside our differences and standing together to improve everyone’s lives, but on the other an almost herculean task bringing many people with differing interests together for the same goal. She was successful, so I guess that makes her an Organizing Hercules.
Some years later, I received a notification that I could register for Jane’s “Organizing 4 Power” course; a six-week intensive course on her methods to organizing working-people, with a network stretching across the globe. I applied, and was later grouped with people I had never met before. We then spent six weeks doing homework together, holding each other accountable, and talking about our own struggles at work. During one of those calls, Jane made a quick appearance to say hello, and to prod about what we had been discussing. In seconds she cleaned up our messy conversation, before fluttering back to do the same to another group.
I was starstruck. Her prose was direct, and she was open about her time in the movement. Nicknamed “Hurricane Jane”, as effective as she might have been as an organizer, her approach ruffled the feathers of her superiors in the movement who felt like she was going against the grain and outside her mandate. She was supposed to fly in, clean up a struggling local, and fly out. Instead, she organized en masse a chain of hospitals, made national news, and stirred the pot. The consequence of her leadership was that hundreds of workers saw an increase in pay, patient-to-staff ratios, and a whole host of dignity enriching benefits.
Apart from praising her impact on the labour movement (as well as bragging that I virtually met her), I want this article to entice people to Google her name. The sad reality is that the vast majority of workers in unions or not do not know her name. That is a shame, and indicative of a broader concern that workers do not know their own history. The struggles and conflict which led workers to organize in an economic and legal climate not too dissimilar to the one we live in today. It is because of them we have some semblance of balance between working most of our lives, and being able to live outside of work. Yet here we are considering having children return to the workforce, or re-introducing a 6-day work week[1].
She realized that, and acted accordingly.
She was an inspiration, an intellectual, and deserving of all the praise she ever got and will get.
If you are interested in reading McAlevey’s A COLLECTIVE BARGAIN book, contact the GSU office.
[1] Quote from the article: “Unions in Canada fought to institute a shorter work week in 1872 and Lander said the five-day work week has not dampened productivity”, as rhetoric around economic growth and making workers work more has been around for centuries, even when the evidence is in the contrary.