Luber: Hey everyone � I�m Marc Luber and welcome to JD Careers Out There, where we
help lawyers and law students find and succeed in fulfilling careers.
And a big part of finding a fulfilling career is figuring out what path fits you.
So today we�re gonna explore one of those paths.
This path is really good for people interested in labor and employment law and people interested
in leaving the law.
Our guest is Kathy Finn and she�s the Director of Collective Bargaining for the Local UFCW
770, which is the United Food and Commercial Workers in Southern California.
Kathy�s gonna tell us all about working for a union and being a Director of Collective
Bargaining.
Kathy, welcome to JD Careers Out There and thanks for joining us!
Kathy: Thanks for having me.
Luber: Absolutely.
I�m really glad you�re here.
Kathy, I�m gonna ask you to tell us what it means to be a director of collective bargaining
for a union, and then we�re gonna dig in to a typical day, who makes the right fit
for this kind of path, what skill sets and personality types fit, what skills from law
school are used, and then how to break in and how to succeed.
So let�s start with the first part and tell us in broad strokes, what do you do as a director
of collective bargaining for a union?
Kathy: First, collective bargaining is when a group of workers join together to negotiate
their wages, hours, working conditions with their employer.
And that�s basically the whole point of a union is workers joining collectively to
get better bargaining power rather than an individual going in and asking for a raise.
You�ve got the whole workforce coming in together and asking for a raise or better
working conditions.
So as the Director of Collective Bargaining, I am the person basically responsible for
all the contracts that my union has with the various employers where we represent the workers.
So I work for the United Food and Commercial Workers union.
Our biggest sector is grocery workers.
So we represent the workers who work at Ralph�s, Vons, Albertsons, Gelsons, Stater Brothers,
some other grocery stores, we also do drug stores including Rite Aid and CVS as well
as some meat packing, meat processing and some healthcare workers that work at Kaiser.
And we have different contracts with all these different employers so we probably have about
80 contracts and I�m responsible for making sure they all get renegotiated each time they
open up.
Luber: I like to ask everybody to defend their career path.
So just like I asked a personal injury lawyer that I interviewed: �tell us why you�re
not an ambulance chaser."
I want to ask you a similar question and I want to say that people would say to you,
�you�re helping unions who are driving up the costs of doing business, you�re chasing
business out of California because you�re making it more expensive for business.�
What would you say to that argument?
Kathy: I just don�t see it that way.
I think unions are providing workers with a voice on the job to be able to have some
input into what they are earning.
The balance of power in a typical workplace is so so skewed towards the boss.
Most people are afraid to ask for anything of their boss because they�re afraid they�re
gonna be retaliated against.
Unions basically provide people an opportunity to be able to have some say in what they earn
and what their working conditions are on the job.
Currently, in this country, we have so few laws that protect workers compared to most
developed countries that unions are really the only thing out there that are doing that
job of making sure workers are protected.
People work really hard and they really deserve to make a living wage.
They should be able to have healthcare, to be able to know that when they�re too old
to continue working after they�ve given most of their productive years to an employer
that they're gonna have a pension to rely on.
So that�s basically why I do this job.
Luber: Alright, if this was at all helpful to you, please click the thumbs up and spread
the word!
And if you want to see the full interview with Kathy, come on over to JD Careers Out
There dot com.
Kathy�s gonna tell us all about what it�s like to be a director of collective bargaining,
who makes the right fit for this path, what skills from law skills are used all the time,
how to break in and how to succeed.
You can take a shortcut to the site by going to JDCOT dot com.
If you�re already there at the site, you can just scroll down to the full video.
Make sure you join our membership, though, so you can get access to all of our videos.
Thanks again for watching everybody.
I�m Marc Luber and look forward to seeing you again soon.
Take care.