Connecting the Movement: Meghna Chandra
Meghna Chandra is a student at University of Pennslvaniya 2013 and is majoring in Urban Studies.
How’d you get involved with SLAP?
I used to volunteer as part of a charity initiative in West Philadelphia. We would write resumes for people in West Philadelphia for about two hours and return back to our dining halls and libraries. I didn’t like the paternalistic relationship I had with the people I “helped”, nor did I particularly believe that I was helping anyone. I asked a lot of questions from the supposedly educated people at my university, and found few satisfactory answers. However, I soon met my friend and fellow SLAPista, Rose Espinola. She explained the word “solidarity” to me, and got me involved with Penn SLAP. Last summer, I traveled to Irvine, California to meet with workers at the Embassy Suites Hotel who were going public with their union. I was moved by their stories of hardship and their incredible dignity in the face of work place intimidation and harassment. After meeting many of the immigrant women who were fighting for their union, I realized that they were not so different from my own mother who has worked at the cost of her own health to provide me and my sister a happy, healthy, and safe life. Since then, I’ve been very committed to working with my friends to make sure that student-labor activism is alive and well on our campus.
What are the biggest problem facing workers in the country?
The shift from an industrial to a service-sector economy is an obvious problem. People used to be able to graduate from high school and get a factory job that paid enough to feed a family and live a comfortable life. However, as more and more of these manufacturing jobs are sent overseas, people have to work two, three jobs in order to pay the bills. People work in environments that are ever more isolated and stressful, under highly vulnerable conditions. The way people organize themselves must change, especially as the workforce becomes ever more diverse. This is the challenge of the labor movement in the 21st century.
What is the importance of having students in the fight for workers rights?
I think this is a really difficult question, and one I’m still trying to find a good answer to. The answer “because it’s the right thing to do” doesn’t seem to cut it in our kind of world. However, I think it becomes clearer if you point out the false distinction between labor and community. Workers are a part of our community; there is no “us” and “them”. For example, my mother is a white collar worker, and after massive layoffs of her colleagues, her work load has increased considerably, with her regularly working, two, three hours a day overtime to finish her projects (though of course, without any accompanying pay raise). Her company meanwhile has recorded record profits for the year. It’s up to all of us to stand together against the tiny elite in our country that makes more and more money every year off of our blood and sweat.
What campaigns have you and your group been working on this year?
Penn SLAP has primarily worked on the HEI Hotel Workers Rising campaign with Unite Here, in which we fought our University administration to pledge to not reinvest in HEI Hotels, a company that reaps profits at the expense of respect of workers’ dignity and health. We had a huge victory this March when the Executive Vice President of Finances, Craig Carnaroli released a public statement that Penn had no plans of reinvesting in the company.
We also had a very successful teach-in entitled “WTF Penn?!” which was about questionable activities our university is engaged in. One of our topics was the condition of workers on our campus. We had an Allied Barton Security Guard talk about the substandard conditions under which many of the guards work. We also had a student speak on behalf of a dining hall worker who earned poverty wages (the worker couldn’t talk for himself for fear of retaliation).
We’ve also been a part of the Coalition of Imokalee Worker’s Fair Food Campaign. We joined forces with CIW members to picket the Philadelphia Trader Joe’s (Traitor Joe’s) for refusing to negotiate with the CIW about their demands for a fair wage for farm workers.
What is happening around the country that excites you/gives you hope that things will change for the better?
Wisconsin is an obvious example of a time when ordinary people, from students, to workers, to farmers, came together to stand against an encroachment on the rights of working people. It was the first time in a long time since I had heard unions being talked about by the media as something to rally behind, something positive. I believe that Wisconsin signals a change in the way Americans are thinking about labor.
