The main focus of this podcast episode is the vital role of the Organizing Institute of the AFL-CIO in training union organizers to effectively advocate for workers' rights. Steve Matthews, the host, discusses the significance of this institute, which has been operational for over 37 years, in equipping both new and experienced organizers with the skills necessary to navigate and succeed in organizing campaigns. The episode features insights from Patrick Scott, the Director of the Organizing Institute, along with senior trainers TJ Marcelo and Patricia Racinos, who emphasize the importance of collective action among workers to achieve meaningful change in their workplaces. They highlight recent training initiatives aimed at engaging young activists from local universities, focusing on building a diverse and energized labor movement. The discussion underscores the challenges facing workers today, particularly in sectors like warehousing, and the crucial need for effective organization to address these issues.

Foreign.

Welcome you all to Riverside rank and file.

I'm Steve Matthews, your host of this podcast.

We're very fortunate today to have the leadership of the Organizing Institute of the AFL CIO here today with us.

Over 100 years of union experience are sitting in this on this podcast.

And we're very thrilled to have people that have accomplished a lot in inspiring people and training people to be effective organizers to be here.

Patrick Scott is the director of the Organizing Institute.

If you could raise your hand, Patrick, that would be good.

TJ Marcelo is senior Training Coordinator for the Organizing Institute.

And Patricia Racinos is LA Director and has over 40 years of labor experience.

She's quite the fighter.

We respect her greatly.

We also in the studio here have Jerry, Mead, Lucero, who is one of you can pop your head over here for a second if you want, who's a fellow podcaster, usually out of Chicago, a graduate of the OI, as am I. I graduated in 91.

I believe it was like 93, 4, something like that.

93, 94.

So even 150 years of union experience, something like that here, we're really thrilled because this is a part of the AFL CIO that has worked greatly for workers.

And we'd like to turn it over to each of you in turn to talk a couple of minutes each about what the Organizing Institute is doing and some of the successes you're having for labor.

Patrick, why don't we kick it off with you?

Sure thing.

And Steve, thank you for allowing us to be a part of this conversation and connecting with TJ and TJ for really having us, you know, having us here and make this happen.

So, yes, the AFL CIO's organizing institute was created some 37 years ago.

And the goal was and always has been to tool up union organizers to win at all levels, from entry level and beginning organizers to advanced and experienced and to folks who are running, to organizers who are running campaigns, large scale campaigns for recognition, who are campaigners, coordinators.

And the OI has a really rich history of being able to train up organizers to win.

I think in the history of the labor movement, there's not been an institution that's the primary face of training organizers to win and providing organizers the core competencies and the tools by which they provide working people the opportunity to win a voice on their jobs.

Right.

People are getting attacked in their workplaces and having a union and those, those, those working people joining together collectively is the only vehicle for change.

Because companies are not going to wake up one morning and say, or owners are not going to wake up one morning and say, hey, you know, we've been treating you bad workers, and we're going to treat you better.

And they're not going to stop being greedy.

And the only way that they're going to stop is that working people collectively make them stop.

And the Organizing Institute provides the tools for union activists, union organizers, and for working people who want to join together collectively to have a shot at winning respect and dignity in their jobs through organizing a union.

Well, that certainly is a good start to talk about what the orientation is for the Organizing Institute.

Why don't we go next to Patricia Racinos and talk to you about what the OI work is and what.

What you're working on now, if you could.

Brother Steve Matthews, My brother's here.

T.J. marcelo, and brother Scott.

It's about making good trouble, and I'm always about making good trouble.

But mainly the premises of the Organizing Institute was to bring in people of color when I came into the Labor Movement over 40 years ago.

Kent Wong, may he rest in peace.

That male, pale and stale.

And it is through the OI that we have diversity.

And I honestly believe, Steve, that if we want to go fast, go alone.

But if you want to go far, we go together.

And we are in this time.

We where we need to go together.

For us, here we are working with UC graduates, ucla, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego graduate students want to get into the labor movement, and we want to train them up to go far.

Excellent.

Excellent, TJ I've had the privilege of working with TJ years ago, and he was probably one of the most trusted people that workers got a privilege to work with.

And he always treated them that way, too, that he was privileged to serve them.

Have a lot of love for my brother, tj.

TJ why don't you jump in and say what you have to say about the oi, which you're very proud, I'm sure of being part of.

Yeah, me too, Steve.

I am proud of it.

And I'm really glad we got a chance to spend a few minutes with you today on the podcast.

It's funny because I told you earlier when I called you, but we're in the conference room in the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor building.

And I told Steve earlier that the last time I was in this room was 24 years ago when I told President Dave bullock of Local 399 that I was leaving Los Angeles to go work for the Organizing Institute in.

In Washington.

And that was a tough conversation.

But in the end.

It was a good decision.

I mean, it's been a great 24 years with Patrick, with Patricia.

We've worked together a long time too, at the Organizing Institute.

And, you know, over the 24 years I've been there, Patrick's been there longer than me.

Patricia was there for 12 years with us as a trainer, and even before that she was a recruiter back in the 90s.

And so we've collectively seen the Organizing Institute go through a lot of change over, over that period of time.

And, you know, I'll just kind of the same thing Patrick and Patricia said.

It's just, you know, to me, the value of the program has never changed.

You know, we are, we are a program that teaches all levels of organizers, from folks who are just starting out in organizing and don't have that much experience to lead level organizers.

We teach, I think, a really solid curriculum that teaches the fundamentals and the basics and trains people in what they have to do to win organizing campaigns.

And one of the things we're doing here now in Los Angeles is working on sort of one of the newest iterations of the Organizing Institute, which is.

Which we call the OI Academy.

And so a couple of years ago, we, we embarked on this program and this idea of training AFL CIO State Federation staff in how to run the Organizing Institute curriculum with an idea that we could grow our ability to train people, grow our numbers, expand the reach of the Organizing Institute.

And so we're here in Los Angeles this week, meeting with our cohort of State Federation staff who have been, some of whom are just starting out and learning the curriculum and are going to be running their own training.

Some of them have been doing it for several years now, and it's paying like incredible dividends.

I think about Marcus shepherd in Chicago who, you know, has been talking about how folks who've been through the OI trainings that he's been able to run in Chicago directly resulted in 25,000, I think, new members through organizing victories over the last year and a half or so.

And so, yeah, I say all that to say it's just, it's an exciting program, I think, in the Organizing Institute.

It's one of the many sort of changes that the OI has been through over the years.

Well, that's.

Thank you for sharing that.

In this area that we're in here, I'm sitting in what's Riverside county, and the name of the program is Riverside Rank and File.

Historically, each of the periods of labor in our country, different groups massively organized when they got together and had the will to do it and the skill to do it.

And you certainly about skill building to do it.

Where we live right here is in the heart of warehouse country, Amazon Warehouses.

This is the historic challenge to people in the Labor Council and the rest of us here to help to organize these workers.

I'm really hoping that we can marry the Organizing Institute with the desire of these Amazon and other workers here to unionize.

And we've had some conversation about Nanette Plasencia, who is an Amazon, wonderful Amazon worker here that had come on this podcast and she got the highest amount of following after she talked about how Amazon workers were treated and her desire and for eight plus years that she's been trying to organize.

So we've had a conversation about her and others that we need to marry together to give them the skills that they can take this on.

That only the Organizing Institute has proven that they have the skill building ability in our country to do in our period of time.

So hopefully we can talk more about that.

I'll give you one final.

Because I know you got some time considerations.

I'll give each of you one final couple of words that you have to say.

We'll start again with Patrick if we can, and then we'll let you go to do your other busy work that you got to do.

Patrick.

No, Steve, thank you so much and I'll be short.

It is the Organizing Institute's intention to train every organizer who works for a union and or activists who are looking to form a union to tool them up and provide them the tools where they can win a voice in their jobs.

We feel that the Organizing Institute should be at the tip of the spear in this fight.

Right.

We truly believe that and we look to and we.

And our goal is to thrive, is to strive to make that happen.

Right.

Because working people are getting crushed and the only thing that's going to save working people is them building these blocks to join together collectively and beat back these attacks on working people every day.

The basis of us winning is that organizing that you're talking about.

Why don't you go to Patricia next if we can.

I'm really excited for this next period.

We just came through recruiting students from UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego and UC UCLA in the UC Labor Summer Program, a program that brother Kent Wong put together.

And we're still lifting it up.

It's young people who want to come and learn and get the skill up to do the desire.

We just need to be there and embrace them.

We are real excited because they these are the fresh eyes out there, Steve, the energy.

We had UCLA interns come and just walk lockstep with us in getting our numbers out to 8,10,000 in the streets on May Day.

But they didn't just do phone calls.

They made relationships.

They came out to the peacekeeping training.

They did training and also training for immigration, know your rights.

And so this was and these aren't students who are looking to get paid in that program.

They wanted the experience and the skill and they had the desire.

I say we're blessed, but we also have to have those open arms.

And yeah, we do want to place them in the labor movement.

We do.

They want us.

We want them as well.

It's a partnership.

We want to go far and we want to go together.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Thank you for sharing that.

Tj why don't you wrap up from you guys if you can.

And then, as I say, I know you got some other important stuff to do and you've been all day at it and getting people encouraged and skilled.

Go ahead.

T.J. yeah.

Steve, again, I really appreciate taking the time to talk with you about the oi and we'll do more of these.

I'm happy to jump on and we can talk more about the OI and organizing in the future, too.

But yeah, I mean, between Patricia Patrick, myself, we've been at the Organizing Institute a long time.

I, you know, I still, the trainings are incredible.

You know, one of the things that's kept me here so long is just every training is different.

It's a different group of people.

Folks are excited about organizing.

One of the other OI senior trainers and I just did a training a few weeks ago in Washington with AFSCME through what they call their Union Scholars program, which was a group of 10 young people from different schools around the country.

And you just see the excitement and enthusiasm they have for going out and they're going they're on organizing campaigns right now.

AFSCME did some classroom training with them, which we helped with.

And then they go out and do field work on actual organizing campaigns.

And, and it's exciting to see how enthusiastic they are about doing it.

And I think that's one of the great things about the Organizing Institute.

It's always sort of created that opening for folks to learn these skills and have an opening, a chance to go out and put them to work.

So I'm just glad to have been a part of it for so many years.

We've got a couple new trainers that we've brought on, and.

And I know Patrick and I are excited about training them up to be the next generation of OI trainers.

So that's.

That's exciting for us.

And, you know, I guess I'll leave you with.

This is.

Is when I was an OI trainee, an apprentice with SEIU in Las Vegas, and in the classroom training, which I did in.

In Silver Spring at the.

What was at the time the George Meaney Center College.

Yeah, the National Labor College is the stuff that I learned back then.

How to do a good organizing conversation, how to knock on a door, get inside, sit down at somebody's kitchen table and talk union with them, how to look for and recruit leaders to organizing committees, how to get workers to speak up for themselves and get excited about building a union in the workplace.

All of that stuff are still skills that we go out on organizing campaigns still.

We don't just do the classroom training, but we go out in the field.

We do field training, we still knock on doors, we're still active in some of our affiliates organizing campaigns.

And the same stuff is going through my head when I go out on a campaign, the stuff that I learned 30 years ago in the OI.

And so.

And so, yeah, I'm just.

I'm glad we got a chance to talk with you today for a few minutes about it.

We're happy that you were able to take the time to be on.

You see talent in people, you encourage that talent, you develop that talent, and we all benefit by it.

Thank you, Organizing Institute leadership.

We appreciate that you've been here.

And, you know, it's.

It's something that means a lot to all of us in labor that want to win, because we only win, as Patrick said, if the OI and its abilities that it has is that tip of the spear that Patrick referred to, we need that to continue.

We need people to know you exist, and they need to replicate some of these things within some of the unions.

So I know that you don't try to limit it to just the trainings you do.

You encourage people to do trainings statewide in federations, et cetera.

And so it is about ability building, where you see talent, and you've done that, you've done it.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much, Steve.

Riverside Rank and File is a production of the United America Network.

This program is available from unitedamericanetwork.com and distribution partners, including Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Captivate FM and YouTube.

Join us again next week for another episode discussing important labor issues.

From Riverside County, California,.

Sam.