Marble Falls Local 100 has conducted an annual leadership training workshop for stewards for more than 40 years, but this year’s session in Little Rock was the first in-person meeting since the pandemic. It was good to see old and new leaders getting to meet each other, often for the first time.
Going to Little Rock made sense so that we could help celebrate coming to a tentative first agreement with the City of Little Rock on a contract for more than 450 workers. A sign of the union’s progress included a visit by the Mayor Frank Scott, Jr, the first directly elected Black mayor in the city, now midway in his second term. The mayor knew the audience and was careful in describing how closely he was following the bargaining, but seemed pleased to hear that the parties had a tentative agreement. Encouragingly, he won the crowd by noting that he had managed to see an across the board raise for the workers in every year that he had been in office, even if sometimes it was only a small bump in the pay envelope. His failure to win an increase in the local sales tax is where he would put the blame, but it was all positive with the stewards.
In the afternoon, there was a great workshop conducted by several stewards, one from the State of Arkansas and another from the City of Little Rock, on how to handle grievances. Everyone in the room had an experience they wanted to share from the trenches and tips about how to navigate the rules, regulations, and whims of supervisors. Other workshops looked at bargaining strength in labor shortages and how to use radio to communicate more broadly.
A surprisingly big hit was a late entry on the agenda on digital organizing to enable more worker-to-worker organizing and servicing. Working with a former staffer and organizer who had been intrigued by the project, we had wondered if there was a way that we could use artificial intelligence to expand the range and tools for Local 100 members to represent their co-workers and organize new units. This session was going to be a coming out party for a trial run of the Local 100 Bot using a contract with ABM, a New Orleans cleaning contractor, for teaching the bot with a series of questions that were preprogrammed that would likely be on a member or steward’s mind. When hands were first raised hardly anyone had every tried ChatGPT, so as the Zoom displayed and the projector whirred, our Philly-based programmer, walked everyone through the steps to get the bot on their screens. While the stewards were trying to sign up, they could see on the screen some sample answers to common questions, where the Local 100 Bot would cite the article and section of the contract with the answer and offer suggestions on next steps to handle the issue and involve other members.
Honestly, no one could believe how well this worked, and what a difference it could make. Stewards wanted to know if they could also get their contracts uploaded, as well as the rule books and manuals used in their workplace. The answer was absolutely, exciting people even more. Most of us might be techno-peasants in this world, but everyone knew that if we could master these tools, we might have an edge in the workplace. On the spot, everyone joined a WhatsApp group to continue to work to improve the bot and get better at using it.
There’s nothing more old school in a union than handling grievances, but Local 100’s stewards were excited to graph some new school advances to build member power in their workplaces. Fingers are crossed that we can keep the excitement up and take the next steps once everyone is back home.
