Talkin' Up the Union

Kentucky

If you want to understand organizing, you need go no further than Rhonda Ledford and Sid Coulter. Without people like them — Kentucky corrections officers who took the lead in organizing their co-workers — we would have a tough time organizing.

Ledford, who works for the state Department for Community Based Services, knew little about unions — until last July, when area organizer Iva Jo Peters came to her house. "She explained that our governor had signed an executive order allowing collective bargaining by state employees," Ledford recalls.

Then Ledford got involved. She went to Los Angeles for AFSCME's first-ever Organizing Convention. "That was a great learning experience," she says. "I got to talk to people from a lot of other states, and found out how workers have organized with AFSCME to improve their jobs."

When Ledford returned to her job, co-workers came to her with questions. Later, she made sure they got their union ballots. "Several people told me, 'I'm voting for AFSCME because you helped me learn about it.'"

Coulter is a corrections officer at the Northpoint Training Center in Danville. He, too, has educated colleagues about AFSCME. Two union organizers approached him more than a year ago, asking if he'd be willing to attend union meetings before work.

"I'd been in unions before," he explains. "They shot straight, told us what they were going to do and didn't make promises they couldn't keep. That's what I was listening for."

And that's what he heard. So Coulter and his wife, who also works in corrections, learned with AFSCME's help how to put out a union newsletter. "I'm talking to other people because I understand that if we're not united, we're going to fall."

AFSCME Organizing and Field Services Director Jim Schmitz says it's an organizer's ability to identify natural leaders — like Coulter and Ledford — that makes building a union successful. "An organizer has to identify them and be able to move people to act on their own behalf — to see the power of collective action."

— C.W.