Member Perspectives: My First LEO Retreat

In our Member Perspectives series, we ask our members to write about their union experiences. This installment features Matt McManus, writing about attending his first LEO retreat.

Cindee Giffen addresses fellow LEO union members at the 2023 retreat.

Matt McManus

A running joke made by critics of the labor movement is that union activists think freedom is an endless meeting. I’ll admit to repeating the jab to myself when I had to wake up early on a Saturday morning for my first ever LEO retreat, deep in the south-east of Michigan at the Kensington Metropark’s Farm Center where even the cows and goats seemed perennially lethargic. Nominally there to discuss our forthcoming contract negotiations, something just as important happened: building a solidaristic community. Not bad for a hazy Saturday in early May.

There is a great deal written about where and how unions can leverage power through the law, institutions, and bargaining. But at its core union activism is about extending democratic principles to the private government of the workplace through organizing workers who may be vulnerable individually but gain genuine strength together. A perennial problem then appears: how democratic do unions themselves have to be in order to effectively democratize the workplace? Are we better off with a centralized and militant command structure? Or getting together, deliberating, and sharing? One of the best things about the LEO retreat was how clearly everyone was committed to the latter. While there are clearly some important discussions to be had, what pervaded the entire event was a real curiosity and empathy for each other’s struggles and perspectives.  

So much happened in the space of a few short hours it’d be impossible to summarize. Personally, as part of a migrant family new to the land of freedom and freedom fries, I wanted to voice some concerns on behalf of those LEOs who don’t just depend on their job for a livelihood but to remain in the country. It was deeply edifying to feel listened to; and moreover to see colleagues think and discuss seriously how we can do better by fellow émigré lecturers. But just as, if not more important, as talking was listening-and it was really eye opening to hear about what was going on both in other Departments and campuses. The LEO meeting really drove home to me how easily we can become siloed in our own departmental comings in naïve unawareness of what's going elsewhere. And how meeting regularly is the best corrective 

Some of the big issues that resonated were serious concerns about whether faculty were subject to unfair evaluations based on sex, race, or gender affiliation. More than a few people highlighted how recent research shows that cis-white men (like myself) have a much easier time of evals than our counterparts, but this isn’t taken into account by Departments. Ambitiously there were some lively discussions on how to ease the transition from Lecturer I forward, in addition to whether it was really acceptable to have Lecturers who’ve been around for 12 years not having further options for advancement beyond Lecturer II, III and IV. 

This is just the tip of a very expansive discussion, which itself felt like a deep breath before the dive into committee organizing and bargaining. We have to see where things go. But I have to say going to my first LEO retreat made me feel prouder than ever to share space with such wonderful colleagues.