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This is Emily Messner interviewing Beverly Brown at about 1:30 on March 9th for Preserving the Picket Line Archive. Do I have permission to record this conversation? Yes, you do.

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Is there anything in particular you want to cover or don't want to discuss? Nothing I don't want to discuss. I have one thing that I wanted to

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discuss which is an email that was sent by Sylvia Burwell before the strike happened and but otherwise I don't have anything. So, if you're ready, I'll just jump right in. All right.

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How would you describe your involvement in the union? Sure, um, let's see. I started working at AU as an administrator in the physics department, like pretty well into when the negotiations were

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happening and like, the union had already been formed and stuff. So I actually like wasn't really associated with the union for the first good, like, few months that I was here, just because I didn't know that it was in existence at all.

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And then like as we got closer to, when the strike eventually happened, I think there was like a little bit more movement to try to get people involved, like new people and so, I kind of got wrapped up in that and then my girlfriend Gabriella was a strike

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captain. And so I helped her out with that. Sorry, can you walk with you at the week of the strike was like for you? Sure.

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Let's see. So in the week of the strike, I actually wasn't here for the first two days of the strike, I think, because I had like a trip, I was going to be out of town just like

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way before I knew this was happening. And so as I guess like, as we got right towards the strike, I was really active at lunch, at work to get like walk around and try to get people involved and see if they were interested in striking

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and stuff. And then later in the week of the actual strike I came and, like, struck on campus for like the last few days.

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And it was kind of like a roller coaster of emotion, because I went through a lot of things like feeling like we weren't going to get any results or anything, especially, like towards the end of the week when we still hadn't

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liked had any negotiations with like, Sylvia Burwell or anything. But then, at the end, it was like very exciting obviously because I think like the students walking out of their commencement, The freshman was like a big push for us just like, I think in actuality

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but just also in like hope and yeah, and then we want, which is awesome. Yeah so what do you consider to be the effects or the legacy of the strike?

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To me it doesn't seem that there is like that great of a legacy. I think that like one thing that we have got is maybe like a little bit more camaraderie amongst like the staff themselves but since like this is still such like a shitty place to work.

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The turnover is still so high that like a lot of the people who struck with me, don't work here anymore and so that's kind of weird. It's good because like we get a

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little bit more pay. But as far as like feeling like the university respects me in any way, I feel even more like they do not.

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What for you was the most memorable part of the strike? I think we're picking up the emergency sirens going on, oh good. Yeah let's wait for the sirens pass and let me think about what

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I'm going to answer. Okay. What was the most memorable part of the strike? I would say, I'm trying to think, one of them was when we like

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marched up to Sylvia Burwell's office house thing, because the university had sent out an email, that they were, like, willing to come for the table and just waiting for us. But then obviously, when we like literally approached them and

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we're like, hello, we would like to talk or something, we just waited there and no one came out, and someone went up and posted one of those "Where's Sylvia Burwell?" posters like on that front door and then we just left and it was really memorable.

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Yeah, that's very memorable. You mentioned that you wanted to talk about the email at the start of the interview? So I wanted to ask you more about that.

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Yeah. So this is I feel like like why I really got involved in the union and what, like, made it worth it for me, because, like, I just started here and so, like, I

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didn't really know. It's like, I supported the union baseline but I just like, didn't have that like background of like feeling and like long-term oppression to, like, really get

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behind. And so the thing that like really got me on, like more participating, was we do for staff members, we have like Merit Pay.

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So every year we have to go through a situation called PMP where we like say how we've done such good things this year and that's submitted to our boss who can kind of like rate us on a scale and then that will determine

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the amount of a raise that we'll get. And since the union negotiations had already been going on for over a year in that past year, before the strike happened, everyone had gotten those PMP raises as normal because like, it just didn't like

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really affect anything, but then, as it was getting closer, and negotiations were like, really coming to a head, they decided not to give us those PMP raises and this came out in an email, which was titled.

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I submitted this to your form, and so it was titled something like raises. like big, you know, "Big Raises." And then it outlined that, like, not only would we be having PMP this year, but veryone would be

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additionally getting a 2% raise, but in the very last paragraph of that email, it outlined that no one who is represented by the bargaining unit would be getting either that 2% raise that they outlined or our PMP raises that year, which was just like,

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literally the most demeaing thing that like, I was just so shocked because like, because it was placed so low in the email. Like I had to tell my boss, I wasn't getting my PMP raised, and this also came directly after I put in all that work for, like the

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form and stuff, to get my raise and we had like, literally just submitted them nd then this came out. and yeah, it just really showed that they are like actively union-busting and actively like being terrible.

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And it made me feel really bad, and it maybe want to participate. That sounds really frustrating. Thank you. Emily.

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It was. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about that I haven't asked about? I would like to talk about one more thing.

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This is something that I may not want to be released to American University. So maybe I'll think about that and let you know but I do feel like it should go on the record somewhere because the union itself also

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wasn't that good to us. And so that like made the whole process way more frustrating because I felt like I wasn't being taken advantage of by not only the university but also the union that

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was supposed to help us and this is just thing, I found really unfair, is that the union agreed to have a five-day strike and the way that we like convince everyone that this is going to happen is that we like promised, that it would be only five days.

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And like, obviously because you need to know like you're not going to be paid during that time, so it's really important. And so yeah, that's what we thought it was going to be and then on that last Friday where we did end up like getting, we won,

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but we held a vote to continue the strike. Which like I thought was crazy that they even did that because they said they weren't going to. But additionally, the vote was

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completely rigged and there was no way to say that you did not want it. So yeah. It was like crazy.

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Do you mind if I ask you one clarifying question about that, and feel free to answer, or not answer, in any way you want. So are you talking about local AU

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union leadership or, as opposed to SEIU 500, or any of these larger structures? Yeah, I think it's kind of difficult because I think it like is just the fact that like, kind of like no one was at the helm even though everyone was at the

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helm. Like the local SEIU 500, like had like someone in the leadership that was like, helping us out and like directing us especially like with like how the strike would

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work and like posters and all that kind of stuff. But when it came down to like, the kind of like movements and decisions of the Union there was like, basically just like a vocal minority of people who just like did stuff and that was really

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helpful in like the organization of everything because like we needed those people to make decisions and like we needed like some people to like take charge but like in the end, we elected them right before that strike or right before that.

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Sorry, right before that vote to continue the strike. And the election process is just really weird because it was so quick and I didn't know anyone involved. And so like I felt like I couldn't make an informed decision and then

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the way that we voted for the strike to continue or not, was we just took a vote whether or not we wanted it to go in the hands of this group that we had elected. And we knew that that group wanted

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to extend the strike, that was completely obvious before this started. And then the vote that we actually took on that like Thursday or Friday night was just like two

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questions, like do you want to just like put it in the hands of these people and whatever they decide we will do or no? And I asked what would happen if you press no and they just said that's not going to happen.

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Thank you so much for sharing that, and we will keep your concerns in mind about that. Yes, One more quick thing. Beverly, you're also an adjunct.

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Could you speak a little bit about that. I forgot about that part. Yes, I am an adjunct. So I am also part of the Adjunct Union I guess.

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It felt- I guess I'm actually not even sure what to say on this. Oh, something that just like was difficult, was that like in the Adjunct Union they have already had like their negotiation and settled with the university.

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So something that was like, put mandated by a you in their contract, was that they cannot support anyone else striking. And so, for that reason, it was

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like hard to get adjuncts and people to support us. Well, not hard to get them to support us, just hard to get them to physically come obviously because it's like in their contract that they could be fired for that.

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Which is a little like weird because I was a little worried that I could be fired for supporting the Staff Union even though like I am staff, you know, yeah. Thank you, thank you so much.

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So, yeah, we're going to start the [?] processing, let's see, this afternoon, we're going to be making- we're going to using software that like both will help us like edit our video at all and also makes a transcript for us.

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Your interview is like as accessible as we can possibly make it. Yeah. This is just for really grateful that you were willing to do this

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and that you were able to get your voice on the record so that future researchers can use it. And we'll probably- the processing situation will probably take closer to the end of the semester

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maybe like early summer. Cool awesome. Thank you so much.