Broadcast Rep Raquel Ruiz Thinks Outside the Box
19 March 2022
The Local 600 baseball caps have already made their way to the members at TV news stations in the Pacific Northwest. Raquel Ruiz, the Local 600 business rep who sent those hats, expects to make her way up north soon too.
“They’re getting ready to bargain – electing their bargaining team and distributing the hats as we speak,” said Ruiz who covers the 12 broadcast stations where we have agreements. “It’s so gratifying to watch them get empowered. It’s not me or any staff person sitting at a bargaining table. It’s the membership that actually has the power.”
This is a lesson that Ruiz – a Western Region business rep since November of 2021 – learned a long time ago. During her more than 20 years in the labor movement, Ruiz has repeatedly witnessed the power of solidarity and worked in creative ways to harness it.
Ruiz was still a student at UC Riverside, putting herself through college and working part-time in the emergency room at St. Bernardine Medical Center, when SEIU led a campaign to organize the workers. The event lit a fire in her, igniting what would become a career path in organized labor.
“They fired all of my friends, all my co-workers,” Ruiz recalled. “These were older people and they had mortgages and kids and I didn’t, and it just broke my heart. So, I got involved in the work of striving to get people better wages and better working conditions.”
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