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President Gerald W. McEntee's Keynote Address to the AFSCME 34th International Convention

Prepared Remarks of AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee to the 34th International Convention


NOTE: Portions of these remarks have been omitted in compliance with Federal Elections Commission regulations.

Sisters and brothers, it is always a special time when we gather for our convention. And it is especially great to be with you in the city of Philadelphia.

As many of you know, I was born and raised here, so this is a homecoming for me. This is where I first learned what the word union meant, where I first learned about AFSCME and the struggle for dignity and respect at work. Early on I learned these lessons from my father, who led the historic sanitation strike in 1938 that resulted in the first municipal collective bargaining agreement in the nation. I am proud to say that he went on to become the first president of District Council 33.

Most of all, it is here where I learned about the enormous pride that comes from being part of the best union in this nation.

So, Philadelphia is my hometown. But I have to say that whenever I am in a room with AFSCME members, I feel at home. And today, with more than 5,000 of AFSCME’s finest here, I know I’m home.

I’ve got to tell you — you all look great. Looking out into this sea of AFSCME faces is a beautiful sight.

Just look at yourselves, sisters and brothers. Look around this hall. You are the ones who breathe life into our great union, who make it run, who keep it strong. You are AFSCME.

I want to thank you for entrusting me with the leadership of our union. It continues to be the greatest honor of my life.

From its beginning, our union has been defined by change — from the initial strikes of the ‘30s to the sea-change that brought collective bargaining rights to millions of public employees starting in the ‘60s.

These changes made a profound difference in the lives of public employees across the nation. For the first time, we had a voice on the job. And with bargaining came better pay and benefits. Better working conditions. A new standard of living and the respect every public worker deserves.

Now is another time of great change, for our union and our nation.

We are at a defining moment — the kind that rarely occurs, in which social, economic and political forces come together to open up new possibilities. Where significant and lasting changes can be made to the very fabric of our society.

Just as the scarcity of the Great Depression gave rise to the New Deal ... and just as post-World War II prosperity led to the war on poverty and a new commitment to civil rights ... I believe we are now poised at just such a unique point in our nation’s history.

We have an opportunity.

And a challenge.

The opportunity before us is to achieve America's promise. The great poet Langston Hughes says it well:

"O let America be America again/That land that never has been yet/And yet must be."

I found this quote in an inspirational essay written by Daniel DiMaggio, son of Gerard DiMaggio of CSEA Local 1000. Daniel is one of 10 recipients of an AFSCME family scholarship. Let’s congratulate Daniel and all our scholarship winners.

So what lies ahead is a battle. A battle over the heart and soul of America. A battle over the future of our country. A battle over what we will become.

Make no mistake about it — the lines have been drawn, with working families on one side and right wing extremists and their Big Business buddies on the other.

In a very real way, it comes down to this: What kind of America do we want in the 21st Century? More importantly, what kind of America do we want our children and our grandchildren to inherit?

Do we want a future defined by equal opportunity for all? Or do we want a society defined by inequality, discrimination and exploitation?

We are in the greatest period of economic prosperity at any time in our 224 years as a nation. But not everyone in America is benefiting from this unprecedented growth.

It’s time to make liberty and justice for all — and I mean economic justice — a reality for everyone in this country. Let all workers share in the wealth of this country. Because they’re the ones who made it.

It’s our choice, sisters and brothers. Because the future is up to us.

We can forge our very destiny through the actions we take in the coming months.

That’s why we must act today as if there is no tomorrow.

Sisters and brothers, now is the time. This city is the place.

Now is the time for us to take bold action and create another era of sweeping change.

Now is the time to dream a better America and fight for it.

Now is the time to transform this union through organizing and political action of the first order, so that we continue to be the most effective force for working families that this nation has ever seen.

As we move into the new millennium, we are poised to make major strides for our members and for all working families.

We can create a nation in which doing better than the previous generation is achieved by hard work and not the dream of winning the lottery.

We can help create a nation free of discrimination based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, age or religious beliefs.

We can create a nation in which real equal pay for equal work is the standard. Women are equal partners in the workplace. It is time to achieve true pay equity once and for all in this country. And we’re the union to do it.

We can create a nation where everyone has a true living wage with real benefits and a secure retirement.

In this better America, everyone would have health insurance and access to the best of care.

Paid Family and Medical Leave would be the law of the land.

And let’s not forget the obvious — in this better America, public employees in every one of the 50 United States would have collective bargaining rights and a union they could call their own.

And that includes state employees in Washington ... Kentucky ... New Mexico and Delaware ... as well as university employees in Maryland.

Sisters and brothers, this is the vision of the better America that AFSCME stands for. We can make it a reality, and just this morning we made some progress.

Sisters and brothers, I want to share some very good news with you. Governor Mel Carnahan just announced to his cabinet that, effective today and henceforth, state employees in Missouri will have the right to negotiate salaries and benefits, which is exactly what our union asked him to do.

That includes the 10,000 workers from Council 72 and the 15,000 more we are going to organize!

Much of this battle for America’s future will be determined by the November elections. We need only to look at who’s supporting the candidates for President to remember that every battle has two sides.

The stakes are high.

Consider the Supreme Court, where the next President may have the opportunity to appoint two, perhaps even three, justices. There have been many recent court decisions that were decided on a 5 - 4 vote, particularly those that concern workers’ rights, so the future of justice in America and the integrity of our constitution literally hang in the balance.

A new court will have a chance to review many crucial decisions — from Miranda rights to Roe v. Wade and the constitutionality of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Plus the many decisions dealing with the workplace, including the Fair Labor Standards Act, and those affecting comp time and occupational safety and health.

What do you think the outcome will be if Kenneth Starr gets on the court, with Scalia as Chief Justice, and one of Bill Gates’ anti-trust attorneys or some remnant from Reagan’s cabinet arguing against workers rights or civil rights or women’s rights?

We can stop it if we launch the most intensive grassroots mobilization this country has ever witnessed.

And sisters and brothers, if any group in America is capable of leading such a mobilization, it’s AFSCME, the Green Machine. And that’s you.

You know what it takes to win, because you’ve done it many times before. When they tried to silence us with their paycheck deception scheme in California and Oregon, we stopped them dead in their tracks. And we scared them off in Colorado and Nevada before they even made it to the ballot.

To win in November, our mobilization will require more phonebanking than ever before, more pounding the pavement, more knocking on doors, more personal outreach to co-workers, neighbors and friends.

This election is our opportunity.

And our responsibility.

And part of this responsibility means keeping the House of Labor united. We must set an example that all Labor can follow. There will always be those that pursue their own narrow interests, but that will never be us. It is time to put aside other agendas and work for what is best for all Labor and all working families, and that is victory in November.

There are some basic steps that we can all take now to pave the way for victory. I’m stating the obvious, but no one can vote without first being registered. So we must do all we can to register our members, our families and our friends.

Nearly 70 percent of AFSCME members are registered to vote, much higher than the national average. But we can — and we must — do even better. We need to register at least 80 percent of our members to win in November and defeat the right-wing assault on working families. We can do that, can’t we?

The engine that fuels our Green Machine is AFSCME’s PEOPLE program. PEOPLE, our political action committee, is the largest union PAC in the nation. And PEOPLE is one of the reasons we have the most effective political operation in the American labor movement. But we can do even better. And with your help, we will.

The other side always outspends us in elections by ten to one or more, and this year will be no different. And while our opponents will never have our secret weapon — our committed and active members — it is crucial that we do all we can to provide important resources to pro-worker candidates.

So let me make a direct appeal — if there is any member in this hall who is not currently participating in PEOPLE, I am asking you to join. Stop by the PEOPLE booth this week and sign up. Joining PEOPLE is an immediate, real and significant way you can make a difference in the November elections.

Let me be clear: If we do everything we can, if we turn out our members in record numbers, we can make the difference on November 7.

We can elect pro-worker governors, state legislators and local officials.

We can take back the Congress.

Sisters and Brothers, the stakes are just as high for organizing. Because growing our union — and bringing justice on the job to hundreds of thousands of unorganized workers — must be a top priority for each and every one of us.

There has never been a better time for organizing in our union’s history and we have never been better prepared to do it.

So shame on us if we don’t do everything we can to organize every unorganized worker who wants to join the greatest union there is!

At our last convention, I had the job of delivering the sobering news that our union had ceased to grow. In fact, we had just suffered a net loss of members. But I am happy to say that through a real commitment to organizing and lots of hard work, we have reversed that trend.

In fact, as of this year, sisters and brothers, we have become the largest union in the AFL-CIO. That’s right, we are number one.

And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. We have worked too hard to get here and I have the numbers to prove it.

But we cannot rest. Because it’s not about being number one.

Organizing is about helping unorganized workers win justice at work. It’s about having more power to fight the privateers. It’s about having more strength at the bargaining table to win better contracts for the 1.3 million members we already represent. And it’s about having more clout to help pass laws to protect and expand workers’ rights.

So let me be clear. We must always stay hungry — hungry to organize more workers and hungry to realize even greater justice for workers.

Now is the time to organize more workers. So let’s get out there and do it. Let’s put this whole union to work!

At our convention two years ago, we set an ambitious goal of organizing 75,000 new members each year. We are not there yet, but we are making real progress.

More than 20 AFSCME affiliates are now part of the Cooperative Strategic Organizing Program. These councils and locals are doing what’s right.

But let them not be alone.

Organizing must be the responsibility of every single AFSCME union.

And shame on us unless we all do it.

In two years, can’t we double or even triple the number of affiliates that are running real organizing programs? You bet we can!

Our organizing is already producing impressive victories.

In Puerto Rico, where for decades we were prevented by law from forming unions, we are building a new, energized Labor movement like never before on that island. That’s organizing!

In Los Angeles, Council 36 is leading Labor’s renaissance. Just a few weeks ago, more than 1,700 city parks and recreation workers voted for AFSCME. That’s organizing!


In Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Oregon, California — and especially in Ohio under the leadership of OAPSE — Head Start workers are joining AFSCME to create better lives for themselves and the children and families they care for. That’s organizing!

In Illinois, Council 31 has a long record of representing state mental health workers. But they don’t stop there. They follow the work and so far have organized 16 private mental health providers, bringing in more than 2,400 new members. Now, I call that organizing!

And let me add that in a great example of their ironclad commitment, Council 31 and the workers at Beverly Farm fought a five-year battle, led a tough strike and ultimately won a historic first contract.

And in Washington, DC, what started as a trickle became a flood of new AFSCME members at the Federal Aviation Administration. In five elections and in just 12 months, Council 26 has added more than 2,000 FAA workers to our union. That, sisters and brothers, is organizing!

And special congratulations to the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (NUHHCE) for organizing more workers than any other AFSCME union last year, from doctors and Head Start workers here in Philadelphia to nurses on the West Coast.

We have also made gains in internal organizing, such as our outstanding work in the University of California system, where we are pioneering a new model of aggressive workplace organizing, confronting bosses and making change for the better every day. And because of our exciting campaign we have doubled our membership in just six months.

This is part of our challenge, as well — building stronger unions and recruiting more members in work-sites we already represent.

These victories are only the beginning.

But increased success requires commitment. And that means money. I know that your budgets are stretched already. And there are some who say that spending more money on organizing is not possible. I don’t buy that. We must commit the resources to grow. We can, we must, and we will do better.

Think about what a difference this union has made in your life.

We owe unorganized workers the same opportunity that we’ve all had to be in the best union in the country.

It’s our responsibility, sisters and brothers. This is our watch, because the future is up to us.

As we grow bigger and stronger, our successes at the bargaining table will grow as well.

In 1999, for example, CSEA in New York and ASEA in Alaska faced tough contract fights. But they hung tough at the bargaining table and in the end achieved their best contracts of the decade.

In fact, Gov. Pataki thought he could play hardball with us in New York, but we taught him a thing or two about that game. CSEA members bird-dogged him all across the state — from Montauk to Menden, from Buffalo to Bay Shore. They made it clear that the hardworking employees who make the state run cannot afford to live on peanuts, which was all he put on the table. Ultimately, Pataki wound up eating those peanuts and CSEA got their contract. In fact, members ended up ratifying it by the widest margin ever.

I also want to acknowledge the successful state employee contracts negotiated by Council 31 in Illinois, OCSEA in Ohio and Council 13 in Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, they went without a contract for a year, fighting every day before winning a fair agreement. And in Minnesota, we even out-wrestled Jesse Ventura. He thought he could short-change our members. But we pinned him.

I am also proud to report that in Indiana and Maryland, where we have our newest collective bargaining agreements for state employees, that our teams negotiated outstanding contracts.

It is no secret that when states and cities have been in financial crisis our members have made sacrifices, going without well-deserved wage increases and occasionally enduring reduced health benefits. But when a state or city is back on solid fiscal ground, it’s our turn. Our members should get their due. And every politician in America should know that we will not settle for anything less.

This is the case here in Philadelphia, where on more than a few occasions we saved this city from bankruptcy, going back to the days of Wilson Goode. Now the city has a healthy surplus, and it’s our turn.

With the contracts for city workers set to expire this Friday, Mayor John Street should come to the table and do what’s right. We’re going to make sure he gets this message loud and clear when we march tomorrow from convention hall to city hall.

And let’s not forget that the June 30 deadline also applies to more than 6,000 hospital and health care employees in this city. It’s their turn too.

But all our success at the bargaining table will mean nothing if we don’t fight to keep vital public services where they belong — in the public sector.

Everywhere we turn, misguided elected officials are selling public services to greedy privateers with no regard to the quality of these vital services or our members’ jobs.

But that’s changing, because the Green Machine is taking action here as well. We have launched an aggressive anti-privatization campaign with a "take no prisoners" policy.

At District Council 37, Local 420 members at the Brooklyn Central Laundry were successful in their fight to halt Rudy Giuliani’s plan to contract out their work for 11 city hospitals and the Chief Medical Examiner’s office.

In St. Paul, Council 14 built a community and labor coalition to defeat Mayor Norm Coleman’s cynical attempt to privatize virtually all city services.

And in New York, we worked with State Controller Carl McCall to divest the state employee pension fund of CCA stock because it is unacceptable to invest the hard-earned retirement funds of our members in a corporation that privatizes prisons and does away with our jobs. McCall stood up for state employees and with that kind of leadership, he might be a candidate we could get behind for governor.

Why have we been successful? Because we’ve been getting out the message that the best people to deliver public services are public employees, not private corporations who put profits before people.

As long as we have a level playing field, our members can provide services better than anyone. And I mean anyone.

And the urgency of our work is clear. Just two weeks ago in this very city, George W. Bush unveiled his plan to privatize the jobs of 450,000 federal employees if he becomes president, and that shows you where his head is.

But, sisters and brothers, to privatize anything, he has to get past us first, and we are the most powerful union in America.

Just as we shore up our efforts against external threats, we must also remain vigilant against internal threats that drain our resources, compromise our values and debilitate our union.

So make no mistake: We will do whatever it takes to protect the financial integrity of this union. Every dollar and every dime comes from the hard work and the sacred trust of our members. So we have zero tolerance for anyone who misuses, mismanages or misappropriates our members’ hard-earned dues.

But when we find financial wrongdoing, we put a stop to it — once and for all, now and forever. We do it for the good of our members, the good name of AFSCME and because it’s the right thing to do.

I want to say a special word about the tremendous job DC 37 is doing to get back on track. Today they are a vibrant union, a political force to be reckoned with, and leading on issues that working families care about.

We have all heard the saying, "If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem."

Well, today’s DC 37 is part of the solution — and they have our respect, our gratitude and our support.

So this is a critical year for AFSCME and for this nation.

Sisters and brothers, we are at the precipice. We are poised to enter a new era, truly becoming the ultimate forces for America’s working families — able to change the course of history, able to make a better America.

Many scholars think that this year’s election will be the most crucial in decades.

I think they’re right.

We talk a lot about the importance of voting and it is always important, in every election, on every level.

But this year our votes will leave a legacy that lasts well into the 21st Century.

This election is about what we want this nation to be like in the years to come.

Do we want a nation of prosperity, opportunity and fairness for all, or just for the privileged few?

Do we want a nation that respects work, values public service and treats its people well?

A nation that celebrates its diversity and insists on making justice the hallmark of our society?

A nation as rich in equality as we are in wealth?

Yes, sisters and brothers, we do and we’re ready to fight for it.

Two years ago at our convention in Hawaii, I asked you to join hands with me in a show of solidarity.

Now I ask you to stand with me.

I want you to take a stand against corporate greed by delivering victory in November.

I want you to take a stand for justice by making organizing this union’s priority.

From the cradle of our democracy, right here in Philadelphia:

I want you to stand up for a better life for working families.

Stand up against the Right Wing that would dismantle workers’ rights, civil rights and women’s rights.

Stand up for the future of this union.

Will you stand with me, sisters and brothers?

Will you stand up for a better America?

Will you stand up for a stronger AFSCME?

Will you stand up for respect, dignity and opportunity?

Will you stand up for the greatest union this nation has ever seen?

Now is the time. The future is up to us.

Thank you and God bless you.

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