GDIT Workers United: A Battle For A Better Tomorrow (2017-2018)

WARNING: The following is a long post about my call center experience.

A good percentage of companies today are witnessing a labor union movement, where unions are forming out of necessity for better wages, benefits, etc. It becomes a big deal to be underpaid in times where the cost of living has been seeing dramatic increases while the Federal Labor laws still say $7.25 is the minimum, which hasn’t increased since 2009.

A person who worked hard to earn a degree shouldn’t have to feel stuck in a position for years making $9.05 an hour, but that was the situation I ran into at General Dynamics Information Technology in Hattiesburg, Mississippi starting in December 2014. I started out for Federal Student Aid Information Center (FSAIC) with benefits alongside another company, Savilinx, whom at the time were paying their employees ~$13 per hour without benefits (no medical insurance or 401k). Still living with family in Gulfport, I made the 140 mile round trip daily to Hattiesburg, trying to establish myself back in the workforce after a couple years jobhunting with no success.

The next year, just when things were looking up and I was working toward get a better position, things took a turn when GDIT lost their end of the FSAIC contract to HP (yes, Hewitt-Packard: what a twist, huh?) I found out then I’d be transferring to healthcare.gov Marketplace in November/December 2015 once the contract shifted over to HP.

I will admit, I had a rough start in the deemed “Health Insurance Marketplace;” there were more scripts I was trying to memorize, enrolling people in health insurance and trying to keep a positive attitude. My morale dropped a bit when I had trouble with a supervisor and his requests; his attempts at motivating me didn’t help and I had trouble with upper management. Maybe I was misunderstood at the time, but I was personally assigned a new supervisor who helped me get on my feet; morale improved in a new group and I was starting to get the hang of it…when I got laid off. For a couple weeks, then they called me back just around my birthday in 2016.

Here’s the catch; I didn’t get a raise at all my first year and a half, and the raise only went to $9.50 an hour I believe in 2017, which frustrated a lot of people. A person I knew at the call center in late ~2017 asked if I was interested in learning more about unions and a movement. I was frustrated already with the raises and feeling unable to do anything about it, so I said “why not?” and was introduced to the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 3509 a couple days later.

I learned that I was maybe the fourth or fifth person in contact with CWA at the time regarding the call center and their wages. Come to find out, they were underpaying and misclassifying all Customer Service Representatives (regardless of tier) and was ongoing for years. At that point, I was all-in on the idea of getting a labor union movement going and had a couple ideas on how we could spread the word without violating policies the company had. For example, we weren’t allowed to have cellphones inside the facility unless it was stored in a locker, and CSRs weren’t allowed to have pen and paper on-site for any reason.

Strategies were formed and we began behind-the-scenes coming up with Facebook Groups, one for the whole union movement and a leadership group. A logo here; a theme there, cards that couldn’t be written on, setup by me with the help and feedback of others. There was a good reason behind using Facebook; the main demographic of the workforce was (are still?) working mothers, and the majority used Facebook as the common denominator. It became easy access, and once the Trainers found out they could be part of the labor union movement, it grew from there in 2018. We were running videos showing what it meant to be part of the movement and why it was important.

The CWA sent a few of the workers for various times to various places, and I got my shot in August 2018 at Netroots Nation in New Orleans. I went there at first for support of the group for more information. Then I found out the night before I’d be making a speech myself and would be speaking at the forum. I went to work coming up with a speech on my phone. The Facebook Video of our conference can be found “here” and a YouTube recap of our conference can be found below. You can also look at the article “here” for the CWA-published article.

Unfortunately for me, it was also the beginning of my end there. Just beforehand, I found out that management indicated they would “NEVER” promote me to another position. Being a key catalyst in the union movement may have had to do with it, but their reasoning was “lack of leadership experience” even though it was otherwise a good resume. I was a Top 10 CSR in my category the previous year and jumped to the Top 5 in 2018 (rankings based on attendance, grades, experience, etc).

GDIT decided in part because of the union movement to sell the call center portions of the contract I was under to another company effective November 2018. In comes Maximus Federal (more to talk about later).