Welcome the VOs
As the pace of union organizing accelerates, volunteers step up.
By Jimmie Turner
"Personally, I do it because it’s the thing to do," Wes McGee says about volunteer organizing.
McGee works as an employment specialist for Hennepin County Social Services in Minneapolis, and serves as a chief steward for Local 34 (Council 14). But he does more for his union: When he dons an organizing hat, he reaches out to people who would benefit from organizing a union they can call their own.
"People are not going to have their wages and working conditions improved unless they are organized," he says. "Organizing means people have a voice in what they say and do in the workplace, and their rights are protected. Organizing makes it possible for people to stand up and be counted."
STEP RIGHT UP. McGee is part of AFSCME’s emerging corps of volunteer organizers. These activists play a critical role in AFSCME’s organizing mission, and the nationwide program that has recruited them in the last two years.
One-on-one, face-to-face contact — on the job or at home — is the best way to assess unorganized workers’ feelings about forming a union. Volunteer organizers can relate to the needs and concerns of their counterparts in the workplace. Unorgan-ized workers are especially comfortable talking to people who know what they’re experiencing on the job.
Volunteer organizers also acquire leadership skills and a sense of pride, because they realize that they have had a hand in changing the lives of non-union workers. And our union grows as volunteer organizers help workers win their rights to organize.
UNION FAMILY I. At the age of 14, McGee saw the benefits of unionism. His family left the segregated town of Coffeyville, Kan., in 1960 for Minneapolis. His father landed a job as a maintenance engineer and belonged to the operating engineers union; his mother was a member of the American Federation of Teachers.
McGee joined AFSCME in 1992 and took to it immediately. He’s become a chief steward for his 1,800-member local, and he also has volunteered to organize during at least five campaigns in the last three years. All this, he says, comes from seeing what the union did for his parents: It brought them equality on the job.
"To me, there’s nothing like organizing," he explains. It gives workers the opportunity to choose someone "who is going to back you up; to support you in what you have to do, to take your problems to; and is going to be able to represent you without having to worry about fear and intimidation."
BORN LEADER. Janice Ramos has discovered new leadership skills since becoming a volunteer organizer. In Puerto Rico, she is a general services clerk for the Department of Transportation, and she’s been a member of Servidores Públicos Unidos/AFSCME for almost a year.
"When you work as a volunteer organizer, the experience helps you in everything," Ramos says. Her improved leadership skills have aided her in a new role on the department’s negotiating committee. She says she couldn’t have imagined herself as a negotiator, but volunteer organizing has changed her perspective:
"When you volunteer, you get the opportunity to see what people like you need, and you’ll find the similarities are incredible. People need to be heard. I’ve found that, being out front as a volunteer organizer, I don’t always have to go to the workers. They come to me and ask me about the union."
UNION FAMILY II. "You support others when you know they need help," says volunteer organizer Kim Mitchem of Los Angeles Local 3150/3634 (Council 36). She worked as a non-union dispatcher in the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). When department employees called AFSCME to inquire about forming a union, Mitchem stepped up and joined the organizing committee. More than 90 percent of her co-workers voted for AFSCME in 1999.
With confidence gained from her participation in the MTA drive, Mitchem has shifted her focus to volunteer organizing. She played an instrumental role in the beginning stages of the huge Los Angeles recreation and park assistants organizing campaign. In the end, more than 1,500 workers formed a union with AFSCME.
Like McGee, she says the values of activism and unionism were instilled in her as a child. Her grandmother’s Los Angeles home was a polling place in the 1960s. Her father was a member of a hotel and restaurant workers’ union. "The union hall represented fun and fellowship," she recalls of her childhood. When her father got sick, she remembers dozens of "union brothers and sisters" visiting him and the union helping her mother financially. "Things like that stick in your mind," she says.
Today, Mitchem is a vocal leader in her unit, constantly encouraging her co-workers to get involved and go to union meetings. "I think it’s important that everybody do their bit," she suggests. "I try to get people to realize that they are the union. The union is not running itself."
Organizing, she says, is a way for her to pay homage to the people before her who fought — and even died — for the union. "It’s just something you have to do. You really don’t have a choice when your conscience tells you what you’ve got to do."
For her, it’s organizing.
