Imagine yourself as a janitor at the University of Massachusetts, a seat of learning, heady verbal exchanges, and written words. You punch in at 5 p.m. in the basement of your assigned building, exchange a few words with coworkers or your supervisor, then pad off to solitary work, mopping, vacuuming, sweeping. You take a short break in the middle of the night, maybe with a coworker or two, then punch out again at 1 a.m. and head home.

You may have even come here originally hoping for a step into the world of education and opportunity. But here you are, part of the all-too-invisible work force that keeps the larger institution running. Not part of the dialogue or the lively intellectual interchange that most people think of when they think of a university.

The Power of Radio
But radio is a way in. Radio—listening to it and speaking your mind on it—welcomes you even if you don't have significant literacy skills. If you can talk and enjoy it, you can do radio. Even if you're shy about talking, radio can encourage you, so pretty soon you might find yourself actively saying what you think and asking probing questions. Before you know it, you're part of the larger dialogue and host of issues swirling around the campus. And you're working hard with others to air programs that interest you, all the while gaining important and transferable communication, teamwork, and organizing skills, and making a quantum leap in self-esteem. Because we believed in the power of radio, The Labor/Management Workplace Education Program at UMass, Amherst, decided to launch a radio project for workers.

UpFront: Our Worker Radio Project
Spurred on by success with leadership, communication, and diversity classes, the Labor/ Management Workplace Education Program started its worker radio show in 1996. The show focused on social justice and diversity issues from a worker's perspective, aired through the student/community campus radio station WMUA. We've been airing a weekly half-hour show, UpFront, ever since, coordinated by our program and put together by frontline workers on campus: janitors, clerical staff, and dining service employees, all members of AFSCME local 1776, USA/MTA, or SEIU,* the three labor unions that have collaborated to ensure that educational opportunities are available to their members through our program. Each semester a small crew signs up, some former radio team members and some new, and with paid release time from their work, the team meets to plan and execute the show.

Topics on the show cover a wide range and include the following: looking at what the university is doing about racism; how racism plays out in the workforce; classism and how it's experienced as a frontline worker; violence against women and how to prevent it; and homophobia. Sometimes the show highlights the life and accomplishments of frontline workers, interviewing a person who is a janitor by night and an artist by day, or a truck driver by day and a writer at night. One object is to debunk the stereotype of the frontline state worker, mindlessly using his or her muscle by day and vegging out in front of the TV at night. Sometimes workers taking our classes in writing or English language come on the air to talk about their accomplishments and challenges. This encourages others to venture forth with their own learning and to offer the campus and larger listening audience a window into the fuller lives and experiences of frontline workers. In the words of UpFront team member Tom Dworkin, "Maybe hearing us on the radio will give people a little more respect for state workers. Maybe they'll realize we do have thoughts and things to say and we're not just mindless robots."

Building Confidence
Radio builds bridges and crosses barriers. Suddenly frontline workers find themselves face-to-face with professors, legislators, and chancellors, engaging them in dialogue about things that really matter to them. Workers come to realize that even people with grand titles and significant power are actually approachable, and they can dialogue with the "suits" as well as anyone. Sometimes we invite community leaders involved in critical struggles to come on the air.

The setting for the show is intimate, and we work to make it feel relaxed, but everyone knows the stakes are high. Five or ten minutes before air time the team members and invited guests are chatting amiably and exploring the topic at hand, but then when it's one or two minutes to air time, then thirty seconds, suddenly the team members are sitting on the edge of their chairs, backs straight, focused, the air is still, quiet, ready. As food service employee Francisco Segura, noted, "You really concentrate and think about what you are saying and how you are saying it, because now you're on the radio, and everyone is listening, and you really want it to be right."

One of our hopes with radio is that learning becomes more real and has real world consequences outside of the classroom. Our goal is to let learning happen where there are real consequences involved, where the stakes are high, and where excitement and involvement build as a result. Francisco came back from a recent broadcast to report that he alerted his co-workers in dining services to our last broadcast. They were spellbound and later started offering their own ideas more freely about the issue. Now they tune in every time.

Powerful Shows
One example of a show that really got people's attention was an interview with a student from Georgetown University who was engaged in a hunger strike. He went on strike to support a living wage for the lowest paid worker in the Georgetown University workforce, and he won! On another occasion, janitors talked about how they were treated as invisible on campus and how that made them feel. They made suggestions for what people could do to acknowledge each other as human beings. That got people thinking and even acting differently.

Building Skills Through Radio
We also burn CDs of the shows for a few pennies each; this allows us to review ourselves as we work, to improve the shows, and to distribute them beyond the live broadcast. Participants in the show develop a number of important skills as they organize and produce the radio shows as a team. Timing matters enormously. A 6 p.m. show airs at 6 p.m., not 6:01 or 6:03. It ends at 6:30, not 6:32. Paying careful attention to each other during a show is critical, noting who might wish to speak when, urging the guest to go deeper into a topic, finding the words yourself, and the courage, to say what's really on your mind. There's the challenge of letting the passion you feel for something show. Before the show, there's lining up the guests and topics and ensuring that people know when and where to come. And there's having a back-up plan, always. Team members need to figure out what to do if a guest is late or never makes it. Above all, team members learn to develop confidence and poise to stay focused and unflappable, no matter what goes wrong, so listeners would think that it was all smooth sailing from start to finish. No one can argue that these are transferable skills that can help in work and life!

What difference has doing radio made for team members involved? Several went for the promotions they'd been considering for years but hadn't moved on, and they succeeded. Some launched whole new careers in another field, like the prep cook who went back to school to become a special ed teacher, got straight A's, and now works with seventh graders in Springfield. One's hoping to become a DJ on retirement.

UMass custodian Joel Gomarlo spoke about his radio involvement at last year's Association of Labor/Management Education Programs Annual Conference in New York. Standing before the group of mostly white collar conferees, he re- marked, "You know, normally I wouldn't think of talking to people like you, you know, suits and all. But I think radio showed me, that, hey, we're all just people. And you're all right. It's given me the confidence not to be afraid to say what I think and to listen to what other people have to say as well. And hey, I'm up here aren't I, and I've come here to New York City to be with you all, and I think that's a good thing. I may be a janitor, but that's not all I am."

Maybe there's a community station or college station somewhere nearby that your program could hook up with. It's amazing how willing people who already know radio are to share their skills. We started knowing nothing and the students at the UMass radio station, WMUA, just took us under their wonderfully skilled wings. We've been off flying ever since.

* American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; University Staff Association/Mass. Teachers Association; Service Employees International Union.

Daria Fisk is assistant coordinator and the Next Steps program coordinator for the Association of Joint Labor Management Education Programs at UMass Amherst. She can be reached at: dfisk@educ.umass.edu