PHOTO: Makala Greene presents a poster at USM about her experience interning with the Maine AFL-CIO.
University of Southern Maine student Makala Greene has just completed her internship with the Maine AFL-CIO. During her year-long internship Makala has been a valuable part of our team, helping to maintain our database, making outreach calls and texts to union affiliates and creating an awesome labor history map of Maine, which we will be unveiling in the near future. She will soon graduate with a major in Economics and minor in Labor Studies.
"We’ve been so fortunate to have Makala with us for the past three semesters," said Maine AFL-CIO President Cynthia Phinney. "Her enthusiasm right from the start for meeting people and pitching in wherever help was needed has been wonderful. And you just have to appreciate someone who loves making phone calls and inviting and asking people to do things! I know that many who will read this attended an event or participated in an action because Makala reached out and told them about it. We will miss her good spirit and skills and wish her the very best in her next chapter."
When Greene joined us last year, she admired unions and the labor movement, but most of what she learned about unions was in books and courses. Growing up in a working class family in Standish with her father working at the South Portland Coca Cola warehouse and her mother teaching school, she wanted to know more about the work unions do in our communities.
"My experience in this internship has been phenomenal. I had a really great time here and I learned a lot," said Greene. "I made some really awesome personal connections with people through my outreach. That was really beneficial."
She said she really enjoyed diving into Maine's rich labor history for the mapping project and getting a broader context for our movement. She admits she was a little intimidated making outreach calls to union members about our events, but that soon faded as she was warmly received by members.
"They were excited about our events, excited to be involved, thankful for the information and to talk and connect with me," said Greene. "On the flip side it was really great when I attended these events and I could talk to them on a more personal level because I already contacted them."
She said that listening to union members at executive board meetings and other events helped connect some of the issues she and her family faced, like excessive overtime hours.
"My dad was never home and there were times for events that he couldn’t leave work," she said. "Those are things that growing up I didn’t necessarily label as a problem. It was just the way that it was. Then when you learn about it from an economics standpoint. It’s just the way it is. But when you look at it from a labor standpoint and you see the individual impact on families you realize that it doesn’t need to be that way."
Greene said she would definitely recommend an internship with the Maine AFL-CIO to other students because it provides a different perspective and experience than what a lot of students are used to in the classroom.
"I took a lot of classes with political science and business majors and marketing, and these classes are almost all top-down. They teach you how to be manager," said Greene. "But when you get that education, I would suggest look at these systems that are being taught a little differently from the bottom up. "
Meanwhile, Makala said she is definitely open to continuing work in the labor movement, but is taking some time after graduation to figure out her career path and whether she wants pursue a higher degree.
"The skills I picked up here are going to be applicable anywhere I choose to go now," she said. "I don’t necessarily have a clear idea of where I want to go or how I’m going to use it, but it’s always going to be applicable because I’m always going to be a working individual."