Member spotlight: UCLA Workplace Representative and Social Work Associate Gloria Hernandez
Gloria Hernandez is an UPTE Workplace Representative at Venice Family Clinic, a community health center under the UCLA umbrella that serves patients across Los Angeles, where she counsels women affected by domestic violence. She was also an active participant in helping VFC workers win union recognition and is now helping fight for their first contract.
Gloria recalls what led her to participate actively in the fight for union recognition: “I always felt like I was doing more; I was doing the work of a social worker, but I’m compensated less than half of what they’re getting paid. I had already been fighting with my previous boss to reclassify me, but I couldn’t do it alone. It will take a movement, a union, to get what we deserve.”
And Gloria and her colleagues were successful in winning recognition—but the fight continues for a fair first contract. “After fighting for it, we have a new title as ‘Social Work Associates.’ The other title has disappeared. Some people got thirty percent raises with the new title. That builds our confidence while we negotiate a first contract with management. The fight will not stop until we get what we deserve, that’s for sure.”
Gloria recently joined other UPTE members and nearly 5,000 union activists worldwide at the 2024 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. The conference is an essential gathering for union members who want to strategize and exchange best practices about what has worked. “Going to the Labor Notes Conference was inspiring. When I saw people from all these different unions and how amazing it looks, it gives me a sense that we’re in a huge movement, and it’s just energizing,” Gloria reflected.
Her favorite moment of the event? Watching her daughter Cynthia lead a panel discussion about fighting the boss. Cynthia has followed in her mother’s footsteps and is now working to organize workers at the Amazon KSBD Air Hub in San Bernardino with Inland Empire Amazon Workers United under highly challenging conditions.
“The heat at the Amazon Air Hub was unbearable, and workers were collapsing from heat exhaustion,” Gloria described. “My daughter began to speak out, rallying others who were affected. Through their collective efforts, they successfully advocated for shade in their outdoor work area, where previously the only respite was under the airplanes, despite temperatures reaching one hundred ten degrees.”
“She just makes me so proud and at the same time scared,” Gloria said of her daughter’s work in warehouse organizing. “I’m scared for her because I just don’t want her to get into any danger as a mom. But, as a union member, she inspires me; she is just so fierce.
Gloria embodies the spirit of the labor movement, demonstrating through her actions and those of her daughter that change is possible when driven by conviction and solidarity.
