Activist Spotlight: Eileen Kell
Eileen (right) in conversation with two members of our young adult cohort in Selma.
Photo Credit: Jay Mallin
Eileen (far right) with the Workers Circle’s general delegation and some members of our young adult cohort outside of the Legacy Museum.
Photo Credit: Jay Mallin
My name is Eileen Kell. I grew up in Western North Carolina and have lived in New England since graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill.
I am currently an academic administrator at Brandeis University and a proud member of the newly formed Research and Administrative Staff Union (SEIU 888).
In my early career as a public school teacher in New Hampshire, I saw the power of standing together through our union. We raised funds, and a ruckus, to support the art teacher in his fight over the school district's refusal to take responsibility for inadequate ventilation in the art room which led to his permanent disability.
Mid-career, teaching at a non-union independent school in Massachusetts, where families pay $63K tuition, teachers joined together to demand an equitable, experience-based salary scale to replace the annual "behind closed doors" individual meetings where the principal wrote a number on a scrap of paper and slid it across the table. If you wanted to "negotiate" for a higher increase, you likely did so at the expense of colleagues who might not be so out-spoken. We traded "everyone for themselves" for "stronger together" and won a salary scale with predictable annual salary increases.
At this late stage of my career, I am learning with my colleagues about union organizing from the ground up. The way has been made easier for us because we are following the trail blazed by our librarians, facilities workers, part-time adjunct faculty and grad students who unionized before us.
I recently joined the Workers Circle delegation to Selma to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and celebrate the bridge crossing. At panel discussions, museum visits with our young adult delegation, church services, and conversations with local lifelong residents, we saw examples of collective action that led to positive change. This was both challenging and inspiring: there is still so much to do, and there are people, young and not-so young, committed to working together.