In a previous blog post, I mentioned how Geraldine Dening of ASH brought the new trade union for workers in the architecture industry to my attention. This union is United Voices of the World: Section of Architectural Workers (UVW-SAW).
UVW-SAW logo
As I said in that earlier post, being a part of a trade union is something that I had wanted to do when first working, before starting my masters, but at the time there was no dedicated architecture union out there. Since Dening's lecture, I have looked into UVW-SAW and seen what a great organisation they seem to be, and also that they welcome students. Therefore, today, on International Workers' Day, I decided to join up.
United Voices of the World, the umbrella union, is quite young in itself, only being founded in 2014, but it has already secured notable victories within the other sections of the union. Also, seeing that some of the other sections are for the support of some particularly badly exploited and marginalised groups of workers made me all the more sure that I wanted to join this organisation – some of the other sections are for migrant workers, gender-based violence workers, and strippers & sex workers.
United Voices of the World logo
At this moment, I don't envision myself immediately becoming very involved, as I am needing to focus on the conclusion of my masters studies. However, once I have finished with that, I am keen to really get properly involved. I'm passionate about workers' rights, and share the same views that Dening declared in her lecture, that there are entrenched structural issues of the exploitation and undervaluing of workers within the architecture profession, which must be changed. I see that trade unionism as one of the most effective and proactive ways of going about tackling these issues, side-by-side with other like-minded people within the industry, so I look forward to getting involved and seeing where this goes.
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