Firebaugh High Locker Room Attendant Michael Evans has only been in the District for a year, but he’s a longtime union member and has seen things from a lot of different angles. For one thing, Michael has been in school custodial management. He was a Plant Supervisor when he left the Long Beach Unified School District in 2007 to start his own business, so he can understand issues that management faces as well as the issues rank-and-file employees deal with every day.
“Actually doing the work is different than writing it on a piece of paper,” he says. “Having been on both sides gives me skill at balancing what management wants with what we can actually do.”
He’s also seen what a difference having a union makes in people’s lives.
“Before I got this job at LUSD, I worked for a brief time at an auto parts salvage company. They didn’t have a union there. The company paid minimum wage without the hope of raises,” he says. “And the work was really dangerous. So they were paying only $8 an hour when you could almost get killed every day. How horrible is that?”
Michael was a Teamster Shop Steward in the private sector for 10 years early in his career. He tells a story about an employee who lost his car in an accident and missed too much work as a result. Management was getting ready to fire him. Michael humanized the situation. He had the employee bring in photos of his three small children. In the end, Michael got management to agree to a compromise: help the employee find a rideshare and allow him to show six months of perfect attendance. Years later when Michael left that company, that co-worker was still there…driving a new car.
