Edmonds College Convocation Welcome: Labor Is Our Infrastructure
By Lia Andrews
Chief Shop Steward, WPEA Classified Staff Union
Edmonds College Convocation 2026
Good morning, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Lia, and I’m one of your Chief Shop Stewards for the classified staff union. But first and foremost, I’m one of the people who works here, alongside you.
Here at Convocation, we’re going to hear about priorities, programs, enrollment, student success, and the work ahead of us this year. My role is to talk about labor.
Labor is the infrastructure of our college. It is the bridge between policy and student success -the active and living work of turning rules into real-world solutions for our students. Labor is our college mission in motion.
Gains and Facing Austerity
To my fellow classified staff: last year, staff were in a difficult place. We voted down a contract after a bad deal. We picketed. We pushed. We went back to the table. And this year, we saw the result of that fight in the form of backpay and a better COLA than what was first offered.
It wasn’t a gift. It was union organizing. It was worker power. And workers are the union.
That matters because in hard years, it’s easy to forget that organizing works. It does not always work quickly or cleanly, but it changes what is possible.
Now, we are facing another hard year. For the next biennium, the state will likely offer classified staff 0% and 0%. This is bigger than one campus; state workers across many unions are facing the same offer.
State workers are repeatedly expected to absorb austerity through frozen wages, vacancies, shrinking teams, and cascading workloads. But 0% is not a plan. 0% does not mean rent stops rising, that groceries pause, or that transportation, childcare, healthcare, or student loans take a sabbatical while the budget gets sorted out. 0% means workers fall behind while being asked to hold more together.
Staff Funding Is Student Success
Student success does not only happen in classrooms. It happens at our front desks, in advising offices, in financial aid, in enrollment, in libraries, in labs, in IT, in Head Start, in security, and in every place where a student's need becomes a next step.
I was a student here before I became a full-timer. That’s true of many of our staff. We build relationships here, and we don’t want to leave. Like many of our students, I didn’t come from wealth. I needed financial aid, and I was only able to navigate it because of my friend who worked as a customer service representative in Enrollment Services. She was Indigenous, like me. As someone who often only had my college community to rely on for both practical and emotional support, she was a lifeline. She transformed what felt like a hostile and absurd bureaucracy into a clear plan I could understand.
Staff labor is student success.
Adaptability Requires Roots
We often hear that colleges must be nimble and workers must be agile. Higher education must adapt. Our students deserve an education that prepares them for a rapidly changing world, and we must respond to changing technology, evolving communities, and new pressures on public education.
But no institution becomes nimble by eroding the workers who make adaptation possible.
The seasons are changing. We can all feel it. The autumn windstorms are coming (so power your generators, by the way). A tree can bend in the wind because it has roots. Our roots are our people. Roots are training, hiring, and retention. Roots are relationships built over time with staff, faculty, supervisors, and students. Technology can support our work and new systems can help us adapt, but care is human. Trust is human. Labor is human.
Standing Together in Solidarity
In challenging times, our contract rights matter even more. Whether you’re a union member or not, you have rights. If you are a member, you have a voice in how we use our collective power.
Know your Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). It’s the bedrock that protects our dignity, our process, our voices, and our ability to stand together. Know your rights, know your stewards, and know where to find your contract. We are holding two kickoff meetings this week on Wednesday and Friday. Consistent with our CBA, you can use up to an hour of release time to attend.
When we show up for each other - not just in crisis, but in the everyday grind - we turn dignity into structure. That structure becomes solidarity, and solidarity protects all of us.
To our faculty colleagues: we may not bargain under the same conditions, but I am grateful for every opportunity our unions have to speak directly with each other. I look forward to asking together this year: How can we be in solidarity with each other? We are part of the same institution, serving the same students, and making our shared academic mission of teaching, learning, and community possible.
There is no agility without staffing.
There is no innovation without infrastructure.
There is no infrastructure without community.
There is no community without dignity.
And dignity is a living wage.
Labor is our college mission in motion. This college works because we do. Thank you.
