Huge news! Hundreds of national park rangers just unionized across not one but TWELVE national parks, including Grand Canyon and Glacier National Parks!
Our team recently met up with unionizing park rangers and here’s what we learned: the desire to unionize is there. Rangers are teaching themselves and each other how to organize, and sharing these lessons ranger to ranger, park to park. With minimal support, this growing network of rangers has already won union elections at Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon, the National Capital Region, the Southeast Regional Office, and more.
The key ingredient missing? Resources. We talked to rangers who are ready and willing to spend their furlough time road-tripping from park to park, engaging in organizing conversations and sharing skills along the way. They just need the support to make it happen. Some have already managed similar trips, and the result has been more unionized parks.
Our team knows from experience that worker-to-worker conversations are some of the most effective and powerful ways to organize. Workers know their own workplaces better than any outside organizer ever could. And the work of a park ranger is unique: because rangers live and work at the parks, coworkers become community and work becomes a way of life.
Our nation’s park rangers aren’t just organizing to get a fair contract–though that’s a big and important part of this campaign. They are also organizing to protect our national parks, which are currently facing severe budget cuts and censorship under the Trump administration.
The rangers we spoke with are passionate and ready to hit the road. The parks are both their life and livelihood, public spaces that deserve protection so that everyone can enjoy them in the years to come.
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