COs a Major Part of Union's Success
Add COs to the long list of public employees who've taken matters into their own hands and organized.
Since 1999, AFSCME has seen large numbers of people — frustrated by low pay and benefits, and abusive managers — seek a voice at work. Even more compelling: the hundreds of members who have taken their own time to organize workers outside their workplace and explain through face-to-face communication the importance of collective bargaining. They're called volunteer member organizers (VMOs), and they have helped thousands of COs organize in the last year.
Most of the CO organizing has involved Kentucky and Puerto Rico. VMOs from prisons across the country have traveled to these campaigns for some serious home and worksite visits to help their unorganized counterparts build their own union.
Kenton Cole, a 23-year CO from Iowa Council 61's Local 2995, has been organizing prison employees in Kentucky for close to four months. Workers in the Bluegrass State have been hamstrung for years by low pay and extremely high health insurance premiums. Finally, last year, they gained collective bargaining rights when the governor signed an executive order.
Cole says that when he started working in Iowa's Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility, his wages were "comparable" to COs in Kentucky. Working with AFSCME, he notes, prison employees have seen their pay rise dramatically. Now, it's his turn to give back. "I've raised two wonderful children on union wages. In turn, I'm helping my fellow COs across the nation."
In 2001, Cole and several other VMOs were instrumental in organizing 3,500 Kentucky corrections workers, who overwhelmingly voted to form their own AFSCME union. "Telling them and showing them were two different things," he recalls of his experience. "When I showed them a copy of my paycheck, that's when their eyes really popped open. But I made sure they understood that this wasn't an overnight process. It resulted from years of hard work."
VMOs are still keeping open the lines of communication with prison employees, conducting bargaining-team training for first-contract negotiations. "This has been a rewarding experience for me, and I would do it again in a heartbeat," says Cole. "It's very satisfying to be able to help the Kentucky officers: Those people want help."
To rev up organizing in Puerto Rico, a group of COs from the United States volunteered to take a hop down to the island to talk to prison employees. When the workers heard of the benefits of collective bargaining, about 300 of them joined a movement to organize 7,000 of their counterparts.
On May 10, they voted 2,193 to 1,004 over a rival union for Servidores Públicos Unidos/AFSCME. COs face demoralizing conditions in Puerto Rico. Often, the gates of corrections facilities don't operate properly and lack proper master controls; employers aren't doing a good job of ensuring that officers are inoculated against diseases; employees haven't received overtime pay; pay and benefits are low and turnover is high. In addition, AFSCME Corrections United has been helping prisons on the island ward off privatization.
Workers should be able to address a majority of these issues in first-contract negotiations.
