Bucking The Trend

by   |  January 26, 2007

Everyone knows about AFSCME’s political successes last year. Now comes word that 2006 was a banner year for AFSCME when it comes to the growth of our union. Last year, 50,000 workers gained a voice by organizing with AFSCME. Twenty thousand were child care providers from Michigan who, through a partnership between AFSCME and the United Auto Workers, organized through the largest card check in modern labor history – one that won bargaining rights for a total of 40,000 child care providers. From New Jersey to Iowa, from New Mexico to Oklahoma, thousands more workers are now proudly waving the AFSCME flag. AFSCME’s successes bucked the national trend. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released 2006 union membership numbers yesterday, reporting a decline of 326,000 union members nationwide. Union density dropped from 12.5 percent to 12.0 percent of the American workforce last year, according to the BLS report. How has AFSCME managed to add workers while other unions struggle to stem membership losses? We are fully committed to creating growth opportunities through worker political action and running aggressive organizing drives in cities across America. At our convention last summer, we passed the Power to Win plan of the 21st Century Initiative, a bold, new strategy to expand our ranks. Recent polling shows that more than half of all workers say they would join a union right now if they could. That’s why AFSCME is lobbying Congress hard to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, so workers have the freedom to join unions without employer interference. Speaker Pelosi has said to expect a vote on this crucial legislation sometime this spring.