AFSCME Across the Nation

Learning the Lessons History Teaches

St. Paul, Minnesota

History is alive and well in Minnesota-particularly for members of AFSCME Council 6. The council held its 50th Anniversary Convention here in mid-September, opening with a history panel. AFSCME in Minnesota is just six months younger than the International, but Council 6 was chartered in October of 1946. It took 25 more years before state workers won collective bargaining rights. They haven't slowed down since. Today the council represents 24,000 employees of the state of Minnesota and the University of Minnesota.

The convention also looked to the future-and to a workplace that is becoming more culturally diverse-with an afternoon program by Illusion Theater. The series of skits explored areas where tensions may arise from misunderstandings based on cultural differences.

Delegates were brought solidly into the present as AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee and a number of AFSCME-endorsed candidates for political office stressed the importance of their active involvement in the 1996 political campaign. Then they returned home to write another chapter of Council 6 history.

Labor Games

Baltimore 

Union hoopsters battled it out Oct. 25-27, raising $2,600 to help rebuild African American churches destroyed by arson. The fundraiser was organized by Jerome Damon, president of Local 1859 and vice president of Council 67. Workers from eight Baltimore-area agencies participated, including AFSCME members from Howard County Detention Center (Local 3080), Baltimore City Detention Center (Local 3737) and Mass Transit Administration Police (Local 1859). Though final honors were won by the Baltimore City Housing Police (F.O.P. Lodge No. 107), AFSCME members will have a chance at a rematch.

Fighting Hatred

Columbus, Ohio

Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11 member Willa Turner and co-worker Linda Cooksey in the Ohio Department of Human Services played important roles in the December television special, "Not in Our Town II," produced by We Do the Work.

The two featured prominently on camera as leaders in a grassroots educational campaign called "Not In Our Town," a coalition of religious, civic, labor and educational groups united to fight hate crimes around the country.

"Not In Our Town II" is a follow-up of an earlier program telling the story of citizens in Billings, Mont., who joined together to stop an upsurge in violence in their community.

State Workers Taken Hostage

Columbus, Ohio

Three workers' compensation employees in Ohio escaped unharmed after a 7-1/2 hour hostage situation on Nov. 13, thanks to James Carter. Carter, a former member of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11 tackled his captor as the latter momentarily put down his gun.

"As the tragedy in Oklahoma and similar events across the nation have revealed, public employees ... are often targets of irrational venom," OCSEA Exec. Director Paul Goldberg wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to Ohio Gov. George Voinovich, requesting a review of risks and security for all state work locations. The governor responded by appointing a committee, which will include state officials and Goldberg, to do exactly as the union requested.

Suspect James L. Dailey reportedly took the workers hostage because his workers' comp claim had been denied. It was a situation that OCSEA -- which has some 700 workers in the 30-story William Green Building where the hostages were taken -- had long feared.

A state task force that included OCSEA members Joyce Pannell and Jim Hisle had submitted recommendations in January 1996 to improve security in the building. Those recommendations, which might have prevented the hostage situation, languished on a shelf until now.

A Quilted Memorial

Washington, D.C.

AFSCME members from across the nation came to Washington, D.C., Oct. 11-13 to view the AIDS Quilt, which was spread out in its entirety between the Capitol and the Washington Monument. Many brought quilt panels they had made for family members, friends and co-workers lost to the disease. Members heard AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee, as part of an ongoing ceremony involving 2,000 readers, recite names of people who had died from AIDS. They also marched with AFL-CIO Exec. Vice Pres. Linda Chavez-Thompson under a "Labor Cares" banner to a Lincoln Memorial candlelight vigil. Among those who made the trip were Cynthia Grabsky, Jeffrey Oskins, Cheryl Minor, Sharon Shepard and Bill Harmon of New York City's D.C. 37, and KipuKai Kuali'i of California's Local 3339. The quilt, a memorial to those who have died of AIDS, now includes 40,000 panels, representing 70,000 people-roughly one-eighth of the total U.S. AIDS deaths.

Harvard Gets an "F"

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW)/ AFSCME Local 3650 members were still walking an on-campus informational picket line when we went to press.

Picketers have been on the line since Oct. 30 protesting proposed cuts in health care payments for some 500 part-time workers. At press time, however, HUCTW reported that it was making real progress in negotiations, with the university expressing a new willingness to resolve the issue.

Though the university is saving over $8.5 million in health care costs compared with two years ago, it was looking to these proposed cuts for an additional savings of $200,000. The union has put on the table alternate proposals that would save the same amount of money.