Workers at Montana’s Youth ChalleNGe Program, an around-the-clock boot camp program for at-risk teens, weren’t getting respect—respect, that is, from management. So, in April, they turned to the MEA-MFT for a little help.

“We needed a voice of our own,” says Dave Borjas, who made the initial phone call to the MEA-MFT to express an interest in union representation.

By June, the employees of the program, which is run by the Montana Department of Military Affairs, were celebrating an organizing victory—and already noticing the union’s impact. “We haven’t even started our bargaining, and we can already feel the difference,” says Borjas, noting that a rigorous physical education test that management planned on instituting for cadre instructors like himself had recently been withdrawn.

The unit’s new president, Monte Anderson, says the union “brings more of a sense of solidarity and teamwork” to the program. “Because of [the program’s] structure, there had been a separation between the departments” and the employees, says Anderson.

Wages, staffing, seniority and shift-differential pay for cadre instructors, whom Anderson describes as “a cross between a drill sergeant, a counselor, a teacher and a babysitter,” are among the employees’ top issues. So are the military-style uniforms employees have to wear. “We are required to wear a uniform, but we have to buy that uniform ourselves,” says Borjas, noting that in the three-plus years he has worked for the program the uniform has changed three times. Each time it changes, he adds, “the expense can easily be several hundred dollars.”

The new bargaining unit includes a variety of jobs at the program, which is located on the Dillon campus of the University of Montana-Western. In addition to cadre instructors, the unit represents teachers, counselors, support staff and nurses.