Local activist tells her story online

After a 2005 encounter with corporate outsourcing, Medina Redwine of UAW Local 889 learned firsthand how important a union contract can be in protecting job security.

Since then, she's become an all-purpose local union activist, most recently joining the ranks of UAW online communicators by sharing her point of view on IAmtheUAW.org.

Medina's essay, "What the UAW is All About," has been one of the most popular on the union’s member-based Web site where any UAW member, retiree, family member or supporter can tell their story.

The popular new site, launched in December 2007, showcases real stories of UAW activists working to improve our workplaces and communities.

"When I first hired in (at the Chrysler Corp. Customer Assistance Center in Auburn Hills, Mich.), I wasn't educated about the UAW," she wrote on the site. "I just thought this was a good job with good benefits. The first eight years I didn't even know where my local was, who the president was or anything pertaining to the UAW."

All that changed when her job was outsourced to a nonunion, U.S.-based company in 2005. Fortunately, because she had union protection, Redwine was transferred to Chrysler’s Mailing Center at the company’s Technology Center, also in Auburn Hills.

"That incident suddenly made me want to get involved. I went to my first union meeting after that. I saw the importance of getting involved," she said.

For years her steward at the Customer Assistance Center, Kathy Wright, had encouraged Redwine to become an active union member. Now it made sense.

"Sometimes you just want to become part of something that is bigger than you. The union helped to define my purpose," Redwine said. "It isn't about concentrating on me, me, me. It's about helping others."

Once bit by the union bug, there has been no holding her back.

Since becoming an activist, Redwine has taken three union classes at UAW Region 1, won election for steward of her new department, joined two local union standing committees, recruited several new union activists out of her unit and helped organize a Celebrating Life party for patients at Detroit's Children’s Hospital.

She's currently making plans to involve her local in building ramps for the handicapped with United Way this summer.

"I now know that I am not just a member, but it is a part of my job to be active and involved," she wrote.

You can tell your story or someone else’s in text, audio or video by visiting IAmtheUAW.org.