As I enter the final stretch of my internship with the North Shore AFL-CIO in Cleveland, I have the opportunity to reflect on the skills I have cultivated and how I have navigated day-to-day barriers of uncertainty and ambiguity.
My time at the North Shore office has enabled me to sharpen two interpersonal, “soft” skills in particular: effective communication and empathy. Virtually all work in organized labor requires some degree of coordination and planning. Needless to say, these, in turn, require communication. For me, this can be as simple as checking in with my supervisor on Monday to set up a rough agenda for the week. On the other hand, communication might mean sending out email inquiries to the state AFL-CIO about relevant organizational resources, sharing and discussing my completed projects with North Shore staff, requesting feedback on an article draft for our website, or forwarding RSVP invitations for a North Shore-sponsored event. In every case, no matter the scope of my audience or the intended outcome, it is essential that I clearly and professionally articulate the aim of my communication.
Like most skills, communication can only be improved with practice. I have benefitted from resources like the AFL-CIO’s internal organizing toolkit, which provides guidelines on how to communicate with workers and employers in certain contexts. While blueprints of this kind are valuable, speaking the dynamic language of organized labor ultimately emerges from experience. Another product of experience is empathy. As much as any other field of work, organized labor concerns itself with people’s needs and how we can serve them. In our case, it is union members and prospective union members. My best opportunity thus far to hear directly from workers came in late June, when my office was invited to join a picket line at FrontLine Services, where workers had served a strike notice to management the previous week. This up-close impression of the sacrifice and dedication that go into a picket line strengthened my sense of empathy for the working communities which the North Shore AFL-CIO strives to support. Moreover, expressing solidarity in this lively, galvanizing atmosphere provided me with a more vivid understanding of the labor movement than is possible in the confines of an office.
Meanwhile, I have also developed technical, “hard” skills in the form of database and information management. Among other information resources, the AFL-CIO utilizes the Labor Action Network (LAN), which contains a sea of contact information from across the labor community – names, union affiliations, email addresses, phone numbers, and more. I have accessed LAN several times to retrieve info regarding precinct-level union members. This practice is valuable because it allows us to keep track of who is involved with our affiliated unions and how we can get in touch with them when something important arises. At first, it is difficult to decipher how to search the LAN database most effectively, but a little practice went a long way in my case.
I have also created and/or modified various spreadsheets over the past two months, including extensive lists of local union hall addresses and affiliated union officials. More creatively, I have developed multiple reports and presentations on issues related to the North Shore’s policy priorities. All this requires me to sift through facts and data and to determine how best to synthesize them before I can submit my work to our staff. It can be a tedious process, but the sharpening of these hard skills certainly feels rewarding when all is said and done, as I improve my ability to interpret and consolidate information.
To be sure, as I have developed these skills, barriers have also appeared. On any given workday, there is a baseline level of uncertainty in the North Shore office. No two days look quite the same, and we are occasionally forced to place all hands on deck when an unexpected opportunity arises. When President Joe Biden visited Cleveland in early July, we had only a few days to rally our network and produce a high union turnout at his speaking event. Likewise, I was informed of the FrontLine Service picket less than 24 hours in advance. There are also, due to the uneven pace of the North Shore’s work, those quiet moments in which I simply have no real work in front of me. The common denominator in all these situations has been steadying myself and locating a way, no matter how small, that I can be productive. (In fact, as I type this blog post, I am in the middle of a low-stress workday, and this has provided time to work on it!) In the most ambiguous moments, of course, to keep myself from becoming entirely directionless, I have made sure to check in with my supervisors about which project(s) I might next pour my energies into.
In my internship’s final weeks, I am confident that more opportunities to hone my skills and to conquer day-to-day uncertainties will arise. Already, the steady growth of my professional skillset and of my comfort in the organized-labor space are evident. Come August, I will be able to look back on these few months with pride but also with determination to make the next personal and professional leaps.