Growing Stronger Every Day
Council 77 challenged itself to meet ambitious membership goals. It did just that, and keeps doing it. Here's how.
By Clyde Weiss
CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA
Undaunted by the fact that state workers/public employees do not have bargaining rights, Council 77 last year set an astonishing goal for expansion — and exceeded it. The goal: sign up 500 additional members in 100 days. The result: 515 recruits, resulting in a 33-percent membership increase. Buoyed by that success, the council launched — and is now on track to achieve — a second goal: 250 more members by their Legislative Lobby Day, Feb. 20.
What a turnaround from a decade ago! At that point, Ronald Bowen, a transportation crew chief with the state's Division of Highways, was optimistic that Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlotte Pritt would win her race and approve collective bargaining rights for state workers. When a Republican won instead, "a lot of members dropped out of the union," Bowen recalls. Disheart-ened, he did, too.
Today, Bowen's back — and then some. Having joined Local 3244 (Council 77) last fall, he's so enthusiastic that he encouraged co-workers to follow him. They share a con-viction that AFSCME is the right union, even without full-fledged collective bargaining. What's motivating them is not just what they might gain; it's also what they might lose — if they don't build a strong union.
Early last year, the 1,500-member council launched its 100-day organizing drive, leading to its biennial convention last October. Turning to its best asset — volunteer member organizers (VMOs) — the council tapped into a groundswell of state-worker dissatisfaction.
ONE-ON-ONE. VMOs are the key to the organizing success, says Exec. Dir. Ed Hartman. They are "the go-to people for the folks we are communicating with." One of the best is Patricia Ramey, a licensed practical nurse who works at a state veterans' home.
An AFSCME member for 18 years and current secretary-treasurer of Local 3244, Ramey talked up the union to state transportation employees across a three-county region. At one union meeting last year, some showed up as invited guests, and Bowen sat next to her. "Members said that if I could convince him, I could convince anyone," Ramey recalls. And she proceeded to win him over.
What impressed him, says Bowen, was the council's determination to gain a "meet and consult" process to negotiate wages and working conditions. A commission appointed last February by current Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) endorsed that idea. Manchin is expected to establish the process, either through legislation or by executive order. Hartman, one of labor's representatives on the commission, says meet-and-consult has given the union another positive talking point for its organizing efforts.
FIRST, LISTEN. Gordon Simmons and Pat Jack have about seven years with AFSCME between them. Although the two are experienced VMOs, each learned a critical lesson last summer at the AFL-CIO's Organizing Institute in Pittsburgh. "It was a pretty intense weekend," says Simmons, an editorial assistant with the state's Division of Culture and History and secretary-treasurer of Local 3248. Because he came from a union family, he knew how to talk about organized labor. But the institute taught him how to listen — and "first to understand where potential members are coming from."
Absolutely, says Jack, a field coordinator in the state Treasurer's Office and president of Local 3219. "You always want to lead the conversation when you're out there. Before I went to organizing school, I wanted to tell them what I knew. I wasn't really listening to them."
What those two veterans heard, when they opened their ears, were angry voices. People were livid over a decision that increased pay for state workers in the three Eastern "Panhandle" counties. It infuriated those who lived elsewhere.
"We had to talk about why unilateral decisions by management wouldn't happen if we had a strong union in West Virginia," says Hartman. With help from the International's Department of Research and Collective Bargaining Services, they learned that the stated reason for the "locality pay" — the cost of living is higher there — was untrue. In one of its few mass mailings, Council 77 then informed some 5,000 highway workers "that we were going to file a grievance, and to give them an opportunity to join in the case."
To attract poorly paid workers to the union and its effort, VMO Barbara Spradling, president of Local 3248 and manager of a state workers compensation office, uses a line borrowed from Simmons: "I pay my dues, and as far as deductions go, the dues are probably the smallest amount that comes out of my check each month. Yet I get more out of that than anything else."
