my life in ten objects: union card

I don't have an actual union card any longer. The last one looked like a credit card and I had it tucked away somewhere with my work papers. It's all online now but I left the last union I was in when I retired.

The first union I joined was the German Education Union, which organises educators and teachers in schools, universities, early childhood education, vocational training and adult education. 

I joined because my father had urged me to do so. Also, a cousin and various other family members and I had grown tired of the discussions as to why not and so on.  

It was the time when I was a student and trainee teacher and I remember lots of action but mostly fun. And learning workshops on all sorts of stuff. The union financed the interrail tickets that enabled me to travel all over Europe during the summer, visiting festivals and doing voluntary work in many different settings (mixing cement for school renovations, chaperoning youth groups, serving coffee to old age pensioners, cleaning hospital floors, replanting beach grass at the coast, you get the idea). And along the way, I met the man I am still sharing my life with.

When I moved to Ireland and worked in bookshops, I joined IDATU, the Irish Distributive and Administrative Trade Union, which then was the trade union representing workers in Ireland. I wasn't an active member, not someone who went to meetings and such, but when in 1984, several female workers and one man at Dunnes Stores, one of Ireland's large department stores, refused to sell South African grapefruits as part of the growing campaign against the Apartheid regime, my union branch decided to follow and soon enough, there were pickets all over the country where I spent many hours, my small kid asleep in the buggy or playing with others between our signs and banners.  

This guy tells the story quite well and almost like a joke: 

I found out a bit later that my name, together with all other IDATU members, was on a list of people barred from South Africa at the time. When we moved to Germany, I dutifully joined the next best union and paid my membership fees and helped distributing newsletters from time to time, collected signatures on petitions and funds for people in need. I had nothing to worry about but I had my rep's contact details and the knowledge that any time any place I had the legal protection of my rights at work - as well as being part of a collective muscle for lack of a better word. 

A while back, during one of my father's family dinners, the above-mentioned cousin was explaining to another guest why he, now a well off retired academic, had always been a union member. It's because I never wanted to lose my sense of solidarity, always wanted to remind myself what social responsibility means and why it matters. But also, because I can.