Member Profile: Doryce Caballero says, “I Choose My Union”

“Unions make the difference,” says Doryce Caballero, a 10-year state employee who works as a dental assistant at California State Prison, Lancaster.

She should know. Doryce not only grew up in a union family (her father was a long-time member of the Carpenter’s Union and the Los Angeles School District), she’s also a Local 1000 job steward and a Member Political Organizer (MPO) herself.

With so many issues affecting our communities— health care, immigration and repeated attacks to strip unions of their collective bargaining power, she’s choosing to step up in her leadership.

Most recently, she organized phone banks in the Los Angeles area in July, bringing groups of fellow members together to take action. They made calls in the community to protect the Affordable Care Act and preserve health care for millions of people.

“We need to elect union-friendly lawmakers and hold them accountable for the benefit of working families,” she said.

Doryce also spreads the word about the choice we’ll be facing in the months ahead: Stand alone and watch our contract be decimated, like we’ve seen in “right-to-work” Wisconsin; Or stand together to protect our contract, our wages, our benefits and our working conditions.

“I choose to be a member of Local 1000 for stability and security,” she said. “Our rights and our jobs are not guaranteed unless we’re prepared to fight for them. I can’t imagine what we’d face in our jobs if our union didn’t have our back.”