Up Against Privateers In Illinois

Council 31 welcomes brave new members who battled, and even struck, against their private employers.

Last fall, Betty Carter and Eva Fred, licensed practical nurses, celebrated separate organizing victories with their new union — AFSCME. They were unusual victories for the women, their colleagues and for AFSCME because their workplaces are privately owned and operated under contract with the state of Illinois.

Carter works at a Chicago substance abuse center, called Southwood Interventions, that treats state prisoners and ex-offenders. Fred is employed by Correctional Medical Services (CMS), which provides on-site health care for prisoners at Big Muddy Correctional Center downstate in Ina.

Fred’s union victory came by way of a strike that is believed to be the first strike at a prison in Illinois and, perhaps, in the nation.

Private sector organizing is new to most of AFSCME, but more familiar to Council 31. It is a leader in “following the work” — or organizing private sector jobs that were once public jobs. And it has been remarkably successful, especially in corrections-related health services.

Illinois contracts out medical services for all of its 31 prisons. Of the council’s 27 elections for such bargaining units in the past two years, it has won 25. In addition, it has won voluntary recognition from four private employers as a result of its organizing efforts.

“Following the work is a strategy that affects all of our members,” says Tracey Abman, Council 31’s director of organizing. “If we can follow the work and bring contractors’ compensation levels up, government leaders will find less incentive to privatize in the first place, and it will be harder to justify — all of which protects the jobs of union members.”

Just as important to the organizing effort is that the workers in private agencies have to want AFSCME representation — and want it badly enough to endure intense pressure. Private employers are usually unrestrained by law in their choice of strategies and in the amount of money they can spend to fight unionization. It doesn’t seem to matter that they are spending taxpayer money, funneled by government to private contractors engaged in public services.

The anti-union strategies of such contractors are chillingly described by former union-busting consultant Martin Jay Levitt in his classic book, Confessions of a Union Buster:

“Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack.”

What Levitt describes, Carter and Fred experienced from the other side.

But union bashing failed to stop organizing at Big Muddy and Southwood.

REVOLVING HEADACHES. Eva Fred, shop steward at Local 3663, and her co-workers at Big Muddy’s medical facility were fed up with the constant turnover of vendors there. “There was no job security,” she notes. “They could fire us for anything. Seniority was erased with every change in vendor, and we had to re-enter 90-day probation periods with every new vendor as well.” Morale was so bad that employees passed through the revolving door even faster than vendors.

Fred had been in nursing for 30 years and never had a union to represent her, but working conditions at Big Muddy led her to believe she needed one. So she talked to correctional officers at the 1,800-inmate prison, and they put her in touch with Council 31, the council that represents them. After several meetings with council staff, a core group of employee organizers was identified. Within six months, they had the cards from three-quarters of the unit’s employees, which was what they wanted before filing for a vote on union representation.

“All of a sudden, rules started to change. One employee who was a big union supporter was fired for leaving a drawer unlocked behind a locked door. Never were there any instructions to keep that drawer locked,” she notes. “They were jumping on us for piddling things, doing little things to irritate us.” They were also withholding raises for some, including Fred, and not replacing employees who quit.

The highlight of CMS’ anti-union campaign was a film shown to all employees that depicted large-scale corruption at another union decades ago. Jumping off from there, Fred remembers, “They said all unions were corrupt. They would take all your money and not do anything for you. So why take a chance on a union?”

Some of the younger employees, Fred says, believed the film and were intimidated by CMS. That, of course, was exactly what CMS wanted — to create enough fear, enough tension in the workplace so that people would vote “no” just to make it all go away.

Other employees, however, were infuriated by CMS’ distortions. And when the union vote came in September 1998, AFSCME was chosen to represent the 26 workers at Big Muddy, plus 32 more at two other CMS facilities, Western and Sheridan, by a three-to-one margin.

At first, CMS refused to recognize the union and negotiate a contract. Finally, the company relented and negotiations began, but after three days, talks were at a stalemate, and the employee negotiating team asked for a mediator. When the mediator contacted the company, CMS representatives said they wouldn’t sit down again for two months.

Impatient with the delay, Big Muddy’s newest union members voted to strike and went out 10 days later. Public prison employees are generally forbidden to strike. Employees of private companies, however, cannot be denied the right to strike under the National Labor Relations Act.

CMS hired a private agency based in St. Louis to provide striker replacements. But a Labor coalition forged by AFSCME told the agency that pickets would be set up at its headquarters if they provided scabs. Rethinking the proposition, the agency backed down and told the prison it was pulling out of the deal.

Already stretched to the limit by the two-week strike at Big Muddy, CMS couldn’t operate when the 20 workers at Western went out as well. CMS then began negotiations in earnest, settling the strike in one day. (Sheridan medical staff voted to strike, but the impasse was settled before they walked out.)

Under the new contract, raises in the first year were as high as 11.5 percent for Big Muddy workers. Other provisions included guaranteed seniority when vendors changed, increased employer contributions for health insurance, and five-year vesting in 401(k) programs — a critical item for the workers who were never vested in their employer contributions because of vendor turnover.

“The COs were terrific,” Fred says. “Without their encouragement, I don’t know that we could have held on in this strike. They walked with us, brought us food and gave scabs hell inside. They understood that this was the front line of privatization — if it could happen to us, it could happen to them.”

THE BULLIES. “They were good,” Carter says of the union busters brought in by management at Southwood. “They generated considerable sympathy for management in a barrage of written materials and in meetings with supervisors and groups of employees.

“They had meeting after meeting after meeting,” says Carter, who initiated Southwood’s organizing drive with a call to Council 31’s organizing department. Management meetings with employees were as long as three hours on company time. Sometimes as few as three workers would be forced to meet with as many as seven managers and supervisors. Or bosses would hold one-on-one meetings with workers and call them at home after work.

Carter reports management and the union busters lied as much as they intimidated. They said, “The union can fire you for not paying dues,” and that the failure to pay dues would result in their losing benefits.

At employee meetings, “They asked us to give management another year,” Carter reports, “and said that they would look at our complaints, that things would get better. They started giving raises and promotions. In July, they gave some of us 3 to 6 percent cost-of-living increases. A lot of people said maybe we should give them another chance.”

But as the union election grew closer, the carrots thrown out at meetings came to feel profoundly like sticks. An atmosphere of intimidation was created, and some workers were afraid for their jobs. “We were scared to talk to each other about unions,” Carter says.

Scared, but undeterred, Southwood employees voted 68-21 for AFSCME representation last fall. The issues — pay, benefits and especially for older employees, the lack of a pension plan — kept them focused on the prize of unionization. At press time, Southwood employees were negotiating a contract.

HEROES. Fred, Carter and all those who fight for unionization are organizer Abman’s heroes. “They’re the ones who survive the tension, fight the intimidation and bolster their co-workers day after day.”

Abman stresses that employee organizers help define for their co-workers what a union is. “If workers have the perception that a union is something outside of themselves,” Abman notes, “then they can believe that negative things could be done to them. But once they understand that their union will do what they want it to, with nobody on the outside telling them what they’ve got to do, then they know they are in control.”

Both Carter and Fred emphasize the importance of Council 31’s guidance and support throughout the process, especially the council’s experience in helping them to stay one step ahead of private contractors and union busters. “Always expect the worst, and be ready for it,” Abman counsels. “That’s what we do and why we’re so successful.”

Knowing what to expect and being ready for it helped Fred and Carter to survive the anti-union barrage by their employers. Today, they’re glad the fights are over, but more than that, they’re glad they won.

“If you make up your mind to organize,” Fred advises, “stick with it. Don’t get discouraged. Stand firm. And if you do, you’ll get what you want.”

By Catherine Barnett Alexander