Victories, Victories
Combining with the power of Volunteer Member Organizers and workers seeking union representation to achieve justice in the workplace, AFSCME's Green Machine has maintained its 2001 organizing momentum with a string of victories in representation elections. A sampling of major victories in the first few months of this year:
Maryland
Workers at three more institutions of higher learning — St. Mary's College and the state universities in Baltimore County and on the Eastern Shore — joined thousands of their colleagues who voted in 2001 to form a union with AFSCME (see On a Roll in Maryland).
Puerto Rico
In six elections, nearly 6,000 corrections officers from throughout the island formed a union with Servidores Públicos Unidos/AFSCME; two other CO units will vote later this year. In addition, some 1,100 workers at the Vocational Rehabilitation Administration chose SPU by a margin of almost 5 to 1. More than 20,000 workers in nine state agencies have now affiliated with SPU.
Missouri
Taking advantage of an executive order permitting state public employees to organize, 5,000 patient care support workers filed to form a union with AFSCME. In less than two weeks, organizing-committee activists gathered cards from more than 50 percent of the workers.
Washington
Council 28 thwarted an attempt by a coalition of large and small construction companies to push through a referendum that would have repealed public employees' newly won right to collective bargaining and effectively stripped away many other key civil-service gains. Council activists readied a grass-roots campaign while also expressing their displeasure directly to the coalition leadership. In addition, they filed a lawsuit that delayed signature gathering for a critical period of time. Result: The construction coalition halted its effort.
Florida
In Jacksonville, 200 bus drivers and attendants, forming a union with Council 79, became the first employees to organize in a school system where student transportation is entirely privatized.
