Bringing Up the Next Generation Right

The Next Generation: A Handbook for Mentoring Future Union Leaders is a how-to manual for developing formal mentoring programs within unions. Researched and written by Cynthia Hess of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and published with the help of the Berger-Marks Foundation, the handbook makes the case that women and people of color can benefit from formal mentoring programs that encourage their development as union leaders.

One reason, Hess notes, is that these groups don’t tend to have the same access to informal mentoring as do the white men who currently hold power in many unions.

Informal mentoring, while helpful, tends to recreate the existing race and gender dynamics already in place, so a union’s commitment to formal mentoring and to reaching out to underrepresented groups can diversify leadership and keep unions strong.

The Next Generation presents a complete step-by-step program with sample agendas and worksheets to chart mentor and mentee sessions, expectations, needs, and evaluations.

Hess argues that a mentoring program is most effective when it includes a broader education program that also teaches skills like negotiations or organizing. I agree: My own experience being mentored occurred largely in an outside group, Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., a not-for-profit training and advocacy organization that helps women find work in the union construction trades. OTI helped me develop my union and leadership skills while introducing me to other women leaders who informally supported my growth through the years. In the construction trades, this is critical for women.

More Hands on the Plow

As a union activist, developing co-workers’ leadership skills has always been important to me because it literally means a lightening of my own load—in addition to the fresh perspectives and energies emerging activists bring to the table. The Next Generation gives me a new, intentional way to look at my own ongoing informal mentoring.

I do have a reservation: Is a union administration that runs a program like this bound to reproduce leaders with the same values as the status quo, even if it includes more diverse faces?

In corporate America and in the workplace, individuals are often singled out to be “groomed” for management positions. These are employees who have shown a willingness to get with the program and who reinforce the values of the company. A company, like a union, may be committed to having women and people of color in management positions, but neither is likely to mentor a future leader who questions their initiatives.

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So many of our unions operate on a business model. Won’t the new leaders they mentor operate on the same model?

Just developing new leaders isn't enough. Unions that want to be strong need to encourage and engage their members broadly in all aspects of the union’s business, from upholding the contract in the workplace to overseeing the union’s finances, bargaining contracts, and organizing both inside and outside the union. This is the most pressing issue facing the union movement—lack of engagement of the rank and file.

In a union that offers members classes on union skills, a formal mentoring program could complement the skill-building and nurture individual members to new levels of activism. But without this commitment to democracy in place, a mentoring program could recreate a new group of business unionists.

I am a construction worker in a local that represents 4,000 plumbers and pipe fitters, where women make up less than 3 percent of the workforce. In 2011 I “journeyed out” of a five-year apprenticeship and in early 2012 I was elected to office along with a slate of reform candidates committed to union democracy, transparency, and actively creating avenues for rank-and-file engagement. In our union, a mentoring program could reinforce the democratic values the new reformer-leaders are working to institute throughout the union. A women’s caucus would be another way for women members to support each other peer to peer.

The program in the book might be modified to mentor apprentices, who currently have no voice or vote under our international constitution. But it would have to be coupled with opportunities for these apprentices to do meaningful work inside the union.

Amy Sprengelmeyer is recording secretary of United Association of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 290 in Portland, Oregon.

The handbook is 68 pages, and is published by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and the Berger-Marks Foundation. Request a free copy from bergermarks [at] gmail [dot] com