Huge news! National park rangers just unionized…AGAIN! The election results are in: 500 rangers across 14 West Coast national parks just voted to unionize, making this the fourth union win for rangers this summer, and the 11th in the last year. [1]
The Labor Force is working closely with park rangers to help them expand this campaign, because these union wins aren’t luck. They are the direct result of park rangers teaching themselves how to organize, talking to their coworkers, and doing the hard work it takes to form a union–even if it means road-tripping from park to park and sleeping in their cars to do so.
Rangers aren’t just organizing for a union contract. They know that union protections protect our parks, too. Unionized rangers are protected rangers, who can push back more strongly on Trump’s attempts to rewrite history and sign away our public lands to corporate interests.
In the words of the rangers, “We are unionizing for one purpose: to be able to continue to serve the American public. In order to do so, we need safe working conditions, fair treatment, decent living wages, livable housing, and to eliminate threats of illegal firing and retaliation.”
Rangers are the first line of defense against the Trump administration’s attack on our national parks. That includes everything they protect and stand for: our public lands, flora, and wildlife, and also our history. Our science. Our stories and our sacred sites.
We need unionized rangers now more than ever. The Trump administration recently gutted two national monuments, reducing the size of each by 90% and opening that land to potential mining and development. At the same time, our national parks have been stripped of historical and scientific exhibits that don’t line up with Trump’s sanitized version of history.
The Labor Force is raising funds to help park rangers organize themselves. It’s not glamorous work: road tripping through remote areas, sleeping in a car when necessary, and eating lots of peanut butter sandwiches, but it works.
Thank you for standing with our national park rangers!
In Solidarity,
The Labor Force