Seizing The Momentum

By Jimmie Turner

Since mid-September, more than 26,000 workers have joined AFSCME. Clearly, the organizing model works.

After the International concluded its first Organizing Convention last September, members and staff representatives went home and opened the activism throttle in Kentucky, Puerto Rico, California and Maryland, where thousands of employees were organizing with AFSCME. The momentum from the convention spilled over into those campaigns, and a majority of workers ended up joining. Thousands more stand ready to cast their lot with the union in the weeks and months ahead.

During four weeks spanning October and November, 25,000 workers from Kentucky, Puerto Rico and California voted for AFSCME. Since the union launched a transformed organizing program in 1999, this string of wins is the largest. The victories stamp a seal of approval on the AFSCME in Motion organizing model.

Employees are also organizing in dozens of other efforts across the country. These are exciting times and the word is spreading like a wildfire: Organizing — protecting workers through unions — is the way to go now.

Tough times

Economic circumstances have helped propel the organizing efforts. "There’s not much work here in Kentucky. We’re damn near at poverty level," exclaims Connie Frederick, a corrections officer (CO) from the town of Burgin.

According to the newly organized state employees, public workers are finding it hard to make ends meet. The primary reasons, they say, are miserable wages and rising health insurance costs; some workers are paying as much as $600 a month for health insurance. Forming a partnership with the union has spurred them to tackle these issues head on.

Workers got a vote of confidence when Kentucky Gov. Paul E. Patton signed a resolution that extended organizing rights to the state’s 30,000 employees. Shortly thereafter, Frederick and a number of other workers from the law enforcement and health care sectors took the cue and began organizing with AFSCME. They voted overwhelmingly in favor of union representation and are preparing for first-contract negotiations.

Straight talk

Frederick, who will turn 64 in June, became a CO nine years ago, after the company he had been with for 30 years went bankrupt and shut down. To get some sort of retirement benefit, he explains, "I don’t have a choice other than trying to finish up with the state."

In 1997, Frederick led a petition drive asking the state legislature to give COs a pay raise. It did, to the tune of $1,000 a year in 1998 and 1999. "But since that time," he says, "our insurance has gone up tremendously. Mine and my wife’s insurance is $608.96 a month." To make matters worse, his wife has cancer, and must see as many as three doctors a day, with each visit bringing a $20 co-payment. Her medication adds $90 to their monthly medical expenditures.

Ivy Sams, a registered nurse in the state’s mental hospital, is a single parent. Two of her children are in college, and two more are on the way.

Sams says that although the governor signed a law eliminating overtime for state employees, some RNs have to work extra hours anyway because the turnover rate is so high. With four children, she could use the extra money, "But I should have a good enough salary that I don’t have to work overtime. I don’t like not having a life because I’ve got to be at work all the time."

When they were given the green light to organize, Frederick and Sams responded by talking to their co-workers, emphasizing that their only chance of improving working conditions was with the union. "Honestly, it was an easy sale," says Sams. "There’s disillusionment and disgust, and the morale is very low right now.

"We’ve got to have some kind of voice to bring about change, but nobody has been willing to listen to us. We knew that the union was the way to go."

Setting the stage

In Puerto Rico, some 8,000 social workers from two units of the Family Services Department voted for Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME. In each election, members chose AFSCME over the United Auto Workers and the Hermandad de Trabajadores de Servicios Sociales, which were also on the ballots.

These elections were especially significant because of the size of the units, the bitter battle with competing unions and an election process that dragged across 34 months. It took a lot of courage for the workers to maintain solidarity and wind up voting for representation. Island activists understood that the positive outcomes would prompt other public employees to test the union waters.

"¡Por fin!" ("Finally") says Luis Fuentes, an employee in family services. Like Frederick and Sams, he is a volunteer member organizer who readily accepted the call to inspire his peers.

"I got involved in the union in Puerto Rico because of all the abuses against public workers," says Fuentes through an interpreter. "I decided that we had to put a stop to this. I don’t want anyone else — in any of the government agencies — to go through what I’ve gone through myself.

"When we get a first contract, I’m going to tell the story to everyone in Puerto Rico. This means that much to me."

Dreams come true

"Never in my right mind would I have thought that there would be a union for home care workers," says Carmen Camacho. She has found people indifferent to her job because it is non-traditional work; home care aides often work in their homes, many of them looking after family members. Camacho watches over her 42-year-old sister, Gloria, who has Down syndrome and is blind.

"You tend to lose your self-confidence and self-respect because people don’t see you as a worker — just because you’re at home," she explains. "The general attitude among my family and friends is, ‘Why don’t you put [Gloria] in a home?’ That’s easy for them to say. But for me, it’s hard to do."

For the longest time, home care aides in California didn’t have an employer of record, which means they couldn’t negotiate wages and benefits. The United Domestic Workers of America (UDW), an AFSCME affiliate, successfully lobbied for a bill that creates an official employer in each county.

Armed with the new law, 12,000 caregivers teamed with the union and pressured the San Diego County board to approve two ordinances: one establishing a public authority in the county as the employer of record, the other giving the aides the right to organize. And organize they did. Last October, the home care workers won the first union election under the new law, voting for UDW/AFSCME via a resounding 10-to-1 margin — 4,961 to 496.

Caregivers, who earn the minimum wage and have no health insurance, can begin first-contract negotiations. And Camacho can bask in the glow of helping to bring the union "home."

More in MD ...and MI

The organizing wins are coming in almost faster than we can type them out. At press time, Public Employee learned that more than 450 employees from two University of Maryland state campuses had just become union members.

Approximately 230 office support, and service and maintenance employees at Frostburg State University chose AFSCME over a small, independent association. The victory was the first at a Maryland state university, which has been the target of a major organizing campaign under way at all 13 schools.

At Baltimore City Community College, some 240 food-service, white collar, physical plant, police and office workers from three units formed a union with AFSCME.

In Michigan, 2,500 state professionals — mostly safety and regulatory — voted to join Local 5.