Solidarity Starts Here
Members assist unorganized workers in their push to organize.
By Jimmie Turner
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
Frustrated with this Chicago suburb's city council using them as pawns in budget negotiations, more than 300 non-union employees figured it was time to organize.
The city already had 570 employees — 170 of them members of AFSCME Local 1891 (Council 31) — on union rolls. Some observers believe that late-comers, in predominantly white-collar classifications, were being used to balance the budget against pay or benefits meted out to union members: Workers with collective bargaining rights were given higher pay increases than those without representation.
The city had been getting away with that practice for years because management was doing a decent job of satisfying the demands of the unorganized employees. That changed, however, when the economy faltered and they began to get less pay and pay more for health care. Says Shannon Seiberling, a new member and library clerk who helped to organize her co-workers: "I think employees should be working with a contract instead of at the whim of their employers. Handshake agreements might have been all right in the past, but I think in these times we definitely need contracts."
In March, the unit voted more than three to one — 170 to 46 — to join the ranks of Council 31.
TIES THAT BIND. Activists from the group without a union were not alone in their quest to organize. Local 1891 members had heard about the city's unfair practices and volunteered to assist in organizing. Explains Raymond Summers, Local 1891 president:
"The overall motivation of our members was that they thought it was unjustified for the city to try to balance the budget on the backs of half of the workforce."
That unity was instrumental in helping to ward off the tactics of the city council, which has a notorious union-busting law firm on retainer. Whenever management gave the organizing workers misleading rhetoric about union representation, local members immediately countered with accurate information.
When the employees requested card-check recognition to gain collective bargaining, the city wouldn't budge. But labor advocates declared at council meetings that they intended to organize and wanted employer neutrality. Under that pressure, the council caved in.
Although city administrators agreed to remain neutral during the campaign, Seiberling says that some supervisors intimidated union supporters and threatened to double their workload. The workers nevertheless won the election handily and all city employees are now unionized. The new members belong to Local 1891, which is currently negotiating a contract that expired in February.
Summers says house calling, worksite visits and similar actions paid big dividends. "We think this is a big step forward because the result comes down to making sure that unionized employees have fair wages, affordable health care and good benefits for retirement. The struggle is ongoing and hard. But we're always fighting and coming out on top."
