Jessica Harnack: You Can't Control Me

In a purple blouse, dark blue denim, black converse high-tops, glasses, and her classic red hair, Jessica Harnack stands nearly six feet tall (top picture: left, bottom picture: top right). Coming over the Washington Avenue Bridge, she meets me at the Science and Teaching Student Services building and we sit in the large, red egg-shaped chairs. I have known Jessica for over two years, having performed a production of Much Ado About Nothing with her in addition to numerous high school classes, but labor and union politics have never graced our conversations until today.

Jessica, 18, lived in Burnsville, MN and moved to the White Bear Lake Area, where I lived and met her, just a few years ago. She is currently a full time student here at the University of Minnesota where she is working for a pre-pharmacy major, of which she will graduate in the next 1-2 years. She wants to be a Pharmacy Technician soon, at a local CVS, in order to become a pharmacist.

She has never worked a day in her life – at least for money, so her personal dealings with unions and labor politics are quite limited. Jessica does not like the idea of working while being in school, though she does not quite like the way our school system is either.

Jessica’s father works as an RN, or registered nurse. He is currently unemployed and when he was employed at a hospital he was not part of a union. But despite being officially unemployed, he works as a temporary nurse filling in for other RN’s and any open blocks in hospital schedules. His girlfriend also works as an RN, but works in a hospital full time (so she is officially employed). She, like Mr. Harnack, does not work in a union.

Jessica’s mother works for Home Healthcare as a quasi nurse-caretaker-doctor for patients, whom she visits at their homes. She worked as a manager, but has since switched positions in order to receive a higher wage and work hands-on with patients and people in need. Jessica’s mother is not part of a union, but, being involved with nursing, she, at least for a bit, volunteered for the large nurse’s strike that occurred recently in the Twin Cities and considers herself “pro-union.” Jessica’s mother’s fiancé works for a construction company and is currently a union employee. He has been laid-off in the past, mainly due to the recession, but has since returned to work with union benefits.

When the thought of unions came up the first thing Jessica thought of was Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, where, from my knowledge, is about a “Robber Baron’s” meat company and the horrible sanitary and working conditions reflected the horrible status of the growing American industry of the time. Despite the initial benefits of unions when they became popular in American history, such as improved working conditions, increased wages, and basic health, etc. benefits, modern-day unions also defend poorly skilled and lazy employees from being fired, unions take money away from otherwise needy families who had no choice in joining the union, and seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of employees as the same, identical person. Because of the rather happy medium of both love and hate of unions, Jessica was a 5 on the labor politics test we took in class. She sees unions as a way to defend rights but to also control the working man. The Harlan County documentary she saw as a very bias and unique example of unions, and a particular example that cannot be accurately translated in to modern-day terms. It was like Michael Moore’s Sicko or Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, where big business is the enemy and the common people should have all the power, basically from a socialistic point of view.

But the most profound thing that came up during our time together was when she said, “the thing that most annoys me about unions is that I don’t like [people telling] me what to do.” Controls, like the Anti-Strike Law bother Jessica because she (if she was a union worker) would lose the freedom to strike. This spoke volumes about how Jessica formulated her opinions, ideas, and views on unions and labor politics. During Ms. Harnack’s childhood, mainly the teenage years, must have been similar to the rebellious teenager, with her, perhaps, being a part of a hipster-esque counter culture that has compelled her to resist sources of authority. That may also stem from her relationships with her parental figures, the first authority figures in her life, who may have tried to control her, giver her too much responsibility, or somehow fail or disappoint Jessica as a child. She also made clear in our meeting that she is not necessarily an extrovert, nor does she have a socially outward personality, which feeds in to her not trusting or accepting sources of authority or alien persons or institutions, including unions. Because unions are largely forced upon people, such as Cub Foods employees, they are entities that have some control over the everyday working person, which bothers Jessica.

Overall, Jessica Harnack feels that unions have been an important part of making drastic, yet very basic, improvements in the lives of the everyday worker or laborer, but have become vestigial structures of modern-day society that control their members and create a poor working environment for achievement.