What Generation Gap?

Communication and education are the keys to advancing labor’s agenda for all workers.

Sherman Henry’s upbringing won’t allow him to back down. Raised in the projects of Miami, he says it became “second nature” to stand up against injustice. So when his manager wrote him up 10 years ago for insubordination for not following through on a directive that Henry says was out of his job description, he fought back.

Armed with tips he had learned from police investigation courses he had taken when he thought about becoming a cop, Henry — a rank-and-file member of AFSCME Local 1184 (Council 79) working for Miami-Dade County Schools — built his case and presented it to management. The charge was dropped.

Most of his co-workers thought he was crazy for taking on management. They also thought he was too radical to be a leader. But after Henry shot down management’s unfair disciplinary claim, he received overwhelming support from them in his bid to become their shop steward.

Henry wasn’t some crafty, seasoned veteran who had been around the block a few times. He took on management and rallied his co-workers at the tender age of 18, fresh out of high school. Today he is the president of Local 1184, and at 28, he’s still its youngest officer.

YOUNG WORKERS BACK UNIONS. The AFL-CIO commissioned a study, “High Hopes, Little Trust,” which surveyed workers between the ages of 18 and 34. The study, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and released this fall, reveals that young people today feel “employers are failing to meet them halfway — and they increasingly [have] become concerned about what they see as a fundamental lack of fairness in the economy.” Today’s young workers, according to the report, have been wrongly associated with Generation X, a group derided for being self-centered and lazy.

“More and more young workers see unions as a way to join together with their co-workers and participate in decisions that affect their jobs,” the report states. Fifty-four percent favor forming a union — compared with 36 percent of older workers — and definitely or probably would do so today if they had the chance. Young workers also perceive union members as being far better off than non-union workers doing the same work.

THE GRAYING OF AFSCME. The challenge of embracing younger workers is critical for AFSCME. A survey conducted by Kiley & Company in April 1999 estimates that 69 percent of the membership is 40 and older.

This is consistent with the graying of government workers generally. Nearly half of all government workers are 45 and older; workers 35 and under comprise 27.3 percent of all government workers. According to the “Government Employment Report,” state and local governments will be “strongly affected by retirements over the next decade.”

“One of the older people in my local said to me many times that they’re not going to be there forever,” says 29-year-old organizer Maureen Douglas, “and there has to be somebody who can step up to the plate when they’re gone.”

As the following three youthful AFSCME leaders show, communication, participation and dedication make it possible to create a much-needed “baby boom” to carry on AFSCME’s tradition for decades to come.

COMMUNICATE, EDUCATE. Douglas, an organizer with AFSCME Council 36 in California, says unlike her mother and father, she didn’t hear about unionism through formal education. “I never heard anything at all about the history of the labor movement in all of my education,” she explains. “I never heard about the AFL-CIO; I never heard about the sit-down strikes in Detroit or the demonstrations that went on in Chicago. The generations above me grew up with more of a history of what a union was, how it worked. I think most people in my generation have, quite honestly, inherited their unions, and so they don’t really understand the struggle that went on.”

Kim Lambert, 34, a corrections officer and president of AFSCME Local 3887 (Council 6), Northeast Minnesota Department of Corrections Employees, agrees. “There’s a whole generation of people out there who don’t realize that people died for union causes.” she says. “There’s a whole generation of people who are coming into the workplace straight out of college. They have never had a real job before and know virtually nothing about the union.”

Lambert says her workplace, the Moose Lake Correctional Facility, spans the ages. The differences she sees on the job between the younger and older workers revolve around seniority. As a local president, it’s her job to keep open the lines of communication. “I tell them to be patient with each other,” Lambert explains. “I tell them, ‘Regardless of how many years you have,’ the union is their best bet for getting anything accomplished.” She also reminds everyone that the young workers are going to eventually replace the older ones, “and the older ones have a responsibility to foster that.”

UP CLOSE, PERSONAL. These young leaders have one thing in common: Something or somebody at work struck a nerve and they challenged the issue head on. They all share the same desire to correct injustices just like union activists before them.

Douglas cut her teeth as a member of the Teamsters. She joined the union in 1993 while working for UPS. She labored on the night shift, which was responsible for overnight air operations. “Physically, it’s a really hard job,” says Douglas. “You had a three-hour window to bring in about 50,000 packages, sort them out according to classification and get them back out on the next plane.”

She didn’t mind doing the work; but she felt management treated workers harshly. “The level of respect for what we were doing was pathetic to say the least,” she says. “It was also the way in which they spoke to us ... they would scream at us and I’d never worked a job before where I had been screamed at. That started it.”

Douglas then began to look at her contract with UPS and discovered workers were doing work outside of their scope of responsibility. The grievances started to pile up. “I always say that UPS supervisors inspired me to be a union activist,” she laughs.

She soon became a shop steward in the throes of the UPS strike in 1997. As the strike unmasked management’s abuse of the contingent workforce to undermine fair wages and benefits, the American public threw its support overwhelmingly behind the workers. “When UPS went on strike the company was 61 percent part time,” Douglas recalls. “The overwhelming majority of those part-timers were under the age of 30. If the young people weren’t on board for what was happening there, that strike would have failed.”

Because of her out-going personality, Douglas says her mentor advised her to leave UPS and go into organizing. She helped organize Los Angeles County’s 70,000 in-home support service workers in 1998. Douglas then came to AFSCME Council 36 where she’s organized court clerks and paralegals in Los Angeles. She also worked on the council’s campaign that organized 500 supervisors from the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority into the union.

SOLO ARTIST. Lambert, now a sergeant at Moose Lake and an AFSCME member since 1990, got the “call” in 1994. Management was tinkering with the vacation benefit and “a lot of people were walking around complaining about it, but not many people were willing to do anything,” she recollects. “I got involved that way and it kind of snowballed.” She was appointed chief steward and elected vice president of the local after resolving the issue to the “staff’s satisfaction.” Lambert was elected Local 3887 president in 1995.

Despite her rise at a young age, Lambert gets respect from all workers. “It’s all education and it’s all straight talk and explaining everything,” she explains about the leadership of her local. “We don’t cut deals. We’re real up front and the membership will respect that, and they will respect it when your hands are tied [by management] if they know that you did what you could.”

SOARING TO NEW HEIGHTS. A shop steward at 18, Henry was elected as a trustee of Local 1184 when he was 19. He was elected senior vice president at 22 and president at 25. He immediately started an internal organizing drive that saw the local’s membership soar from 1,800 to 4,300 members.

His age, he says, was a factor in negotiations with Miami-Dade County School Board. “They offered a 1 percent wage increase,” Henry remembers. “It was kind of to teach me a lesson that ‘you’re in the big leagues now. We’re going to wear you down.’

“You’re dealing with folks with all of those degrees and experience, but the experience and the degrees don’t mean anything if you’ve got people power,” he continues. “We taught them that we take our fight to the street. We put together a rally and the support was overwhelming by the membership.” More than 1,500 members protested in front of the school administration building, and Henry says the event got the attention of the elected school board and even the national media. The board eventually relented and workers got 4 to 5.3 percent wage increases for one year, depending on their job classification.

STOP GAP. Lambert states that any gap among workers is based on years of union work experience, not age. If workers have any union background at all, “that helps them have a better understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish,” she says.

“I think that there’s a strong sentiment — among young and old — that a union is like Triple A. If you’ve got a problem, we’ll take care of it,” adds Douglas. “Partially, the generation gap is a myth because there are people who are truly dedicated to the movement, no matter what their age, and they understand that it isn’t a social club.”

Henry points out that his experiences at the worksite also transcended age. “I was just the guy that kind of talked to employees about management’s cowardly behavior and how they clearly violated our contractual rights,” he says. “I was saying, ‘We don’t have to put up with this kind of behavior. They [management] hold us accountable and to a code of conduct, and we should hold them to the same.’”

TAKE TIME TO TALK. Unionism is a “constant, constant, constant” educational process that informs workers what a union is and “what it can and can’t do,” Lambert states. “The older workers understand what the limitations are.

“People really have to take the responsibility to pass the torch in terms of talking about their experiences, their battles — whatever it is,” Douglas offers. “You have to involve the youngsters around you.”

“One of the things you’ll find in the workplace,” Henry cautions, “is a level of discomfort because the leaders are not doing what they’re supposed to. As a result, you may have disenfranchisement setting in. Leaders have to prove to the workers that we’re here to serve them. And let people know, ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’”

Henry also recommends that if leaders have young radicals on site, “give them some responsibility and hold them accountable. We all have to work collaboratively to achieve our goals.”

By Jimmie Turner