Organizing for Power
From state to state, workers are organizing with AFSCME for a voice at work. Here are some recent victories:
CALIFORNIA
Another 2,700 California home care workers have joined the United Domestic Workers of America-NUHHCE, pushing their total in the state to more than 40,000 in an unbroken string of organizing successes beginning in 2001. This time, workers from Imperial and Inyo counties chose the AFSCME affiliate. In Los Angeles, 86 computer technicians and program specialists from the court system elected to form a union with Council 36. The new unit brings AFSCME's membership in the Los Angeles courts to 1,600. During the campaign, workers and labor advocates fought off an attempt to impose an eight-day furlough that would have affected close to 6,000 court employees.
NEW YORK
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/ AFSCME Local 1000 racked up several wins. At the State University of New York-New Paltz, 100 food service workers employed by for-profit Sodexho signed on to the union by card-check recognition. In Albany, 60 building custodians from the Association for Retarded Citizens voted to form a union with CSEA. And, 50 Head Start teachers in Ulster County, plus 51 teachers' assistants in the Ilion School District, gained collective-bargaining power through card-check.
MINNESOTA
By garnering 61 percent of the vote, a 330-member unit of employees from Walker Methodist Health Center in Minneapolis formed a union with Council 14.
PENNSYLVANIA
One hundred ninety-seven professional and non-professional employees from Northwestern Academy, a publicly funded juvenile detention center in Coal Township, voted 121 to 11 to form a union with Council 86. The workers, employed by Northwestern Human Services, a private, non-profit agency, emerged victorious after a year-long organizing campaign. In Philadelphia, AFSCME scored a first: a unit of 13 who often pose in the nude at Moore College of Art and Design joined Council 47 after a 7-to-0 tally. Their primary concerns: low wages, and cold and dirty studios.
WASHINGTON
The organizing pace is accelerating for Council 28. More than 1,100 Department of Ecology employees formed a union with the council after a resounding 61 percent margin of victory in the largest state-employee election since 1973. Two units of workers — 128 from the Department of Social and Health Services and 54 from the Department of Fish and Wildlife — have filed for union representation via the card-check route. In addition, Council 2 is welcoming 100 clerical, technical and professional employees of the City of Lynwood; they voted more than 2 to 1 to join.
