NY AFSCME Members Take to Streets to Support Wisconsin Labor Battle

February 23, 2011

SOLIDARITY! – CSEA members and others rally to support Wisconsin public service workers and teachers who are fighting to preserve their collective bargaining rights. (Photo credit: Ed Molitor/CSEA)

Albany, N.Y. — More than 200 members of Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000 and other AFSCME affiliates recently demonstrated to show solidarity with Wisconsin’s public service workers and teachers who are battling to preserve their collective bargaining rights.

CSEA, part of the Capital District Area Labor Federation, rallied along with members of AFSCME’s New York affiliates, DC 37, DC 1707 and Council 82 and several other public and private sector unions in front of CSEA’s Albany headquarters on Feb. 18.

“Wisconsin's newly elected governor is waging one of the most vicious attacks on working people our nation has seen in generations," declared CSEA Pres. Danny Donohue, also an AFSCME International vice president. “We are talking about a fundamental right to bargain fairly and in good faith. This is a proposal to make public service workers second-class citizens without a voice – it's an assault on American values and must stop here!”

“Wisconsin is ground zero,” added Capital District Area Labor Federation Exec. Dir Kathleen Scales.

Several CSEA officers, activists and staff, including Exec. Vice Pres. and AFSCME International vice president Mary Sullivan (also an AFSCME International vice president), and Statewide Treas. Joe McMullen, also went to Wisconsin to rally alongside the public workers.

Watch Sullivan address the CSEA rally in this YouTube video.