Coming to the party

As the son of a staunch unionist and former FEDFA delegate, I have no satisfactory answer as to why it's taken me a decade to join the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance. It certainly wasn't any sort of rebellion. More a case of allowing myself to be dissuaded from doing so by older hands when I was a publishing greenhorn, then having no direct contact with the union for so long that I virtually forgot about it. (Yes, I now realise it was beavering away in my interests in the background.) I admit that on the rare occasions when the subject of the MEAA was raised, I permitted those same negative views to go unchallenged, so I must plead guilty on the count of apathy.

This situation finally changed a while back, when my sense of social obligation was stirred by that renowned rabblerouser SC, who invited me to an informal meeting with a union rep. Truth be told, I took almost no convincing of the worth of membership, because the basic tenets - fair conditions and working with a common purpose - are principles in which I've always believed. It's moral. It's rational. For me, it's in the blood. And I'll tell you what else it is - it's frankly embarrassing that I didn't sign up 10 years ago.