Fighting & Winning
By Jon Melegrito
Over the last 12 months, thousands of public service workers — including family child care providers, home care workers and aides to the developmentally disabled — have asserted their right to unionize with AFSCME. A majority of these workers do not receive health care insurance, retirement or other benefits. Their successful efforts — with the help of volunteer member organizers (VMOs) — have spurred spirited organizing drives across the country.
IOWA
Child Care Providers Together/AFSCME is the new union for the state's 6,000 registered providers. A strong majority signed cards authorizing Iowa Council 61 to represent them in contract negotiations after Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) signed an executive order in January giving them the right to union representation. (See back cover.) SEIU made unsuccessful efforts to obstruct the process.
AFSCME, which represents more than 150,000 child care providers of all kinds across the country, is the largest union of child care workers. In 2004, the union launched a nationwide campaign to help family providers — who care for children in their own homes — win a voice with AFSCME.
In July, after Vilsack signed an executive order granting the right to organize and bargain, 2,500 home care providers joined Council 61.
MINNESOTA
Four hundred twenty child care providers in St. Louis County are hailing a major achievement: They are the first in the state to have union representation. Three months ago, officials authorized the county's Public Health and Human Services Department to meet and confer with CCPT/AFSCME Council 5 on matters of mutual concern to the county and home-based, licensed child care providers.
CCPT has been seeking partnerships with the state's counties because they regulate child care. In Ramsey County, more than half of the 860 providers have already signed up, and are awaiting a vote by the county commissioners (see related article). A union drive is also under way for Hennepin County's 1,400 providers.
"This partnership with St. Louis County is a bold step forward," points out Judy Massey, a child care provider and vice president of the Ramsey County CCPT. "I urge other counties to welcome our union so we can team up and improve child care services."
Massey explains that both the state's 14,000 licensed providers and consumers share concerns about deep government funding cuts and low salaries.
MISSOURI
The election of Republican Gov. Matt Blunt, who has targeted state workers by rescinding their collective bargaining rights on his first day in office, prompted a different approach to organizing. And it worked. Since August 2005, more than 300 home care attendants have joined the AFSCME Quality Home Care Partnership.
Council 72's "alliance agreements" with Centers for Independent Living, the state-sponsored resource and referral agencies for home care, provide for dues deduction. Five of the 21 centers have agreed to allow their attendants to organize and form a partnership to advance the interests of both providers and clients. They succeeded recently in getting legislation introduced in the state assembly to restore the Medicaid cuts that the governor pushed through last year.
Provider Michelle Whitley, a partnership member, is elated that home care advocates have a unified voice: "We're going to move mountains to protect and improve the home care program."
NEW YORK
For the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000, it's the largest-ever victory in private-sector organizing: 1,200 workers at Lifespire Inc., a New York City human-service agency that serves developmentally disabled individuals, are the union's newest members.
Launched a year ago, the campaign to bring a union to Lifespire was preceded by several months of innovative and comprehensive organizing throughout the city. Among the tasks: forming broad coalitions with community groups and holding joint initiatives with sympathetic elected officials who urged the company not to fight the union drive. Moreover, the organizing committee documented and exposed quality care problems at the agency. Those actions eventually compelled employers to sign card check/neutrality agreements. Throughout the public campaign, CSEA showed itself willing to enlist the agency's cooperation before calling the attention of regulators.
"We now have strength and power to make the changes we need at our facilities," explains Norma de Guzman, a developmental aide at the John A. Cooke Center in Queens. "It's not just for us. It's also for the consumers we are serving." A leader in bringing the union to Lifespire, de Guzman and her co-workers are now turning their attention to negotiating their first contract.
OREGON
Last September, after a yearlong campaign, child care workers won a groundbreaking victory. Five thousand of them organized a union with CCPT/Council 75 after securing support from a strong majority of providers. Commending their choice to unionize, Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) issued an executive order making CCPT the exclusive bargaining representative for registered providers throughout the state.
Cheryl Reece of Milwaukie, Ore., the only provider on the state's Commission for Child Care and a member of the negotiating team, was ecstatic that the big hurdle had finally been cleared. "I have learned that one voice is only a whisper," she says. "Many voices are a movement." Union negotiators are currently at the bargaining table.
Oregon — where Council 75 represents over 21,000 workers — is AFSCME's first CCPT win based on an executive order.
PUERTO RICO
It took three years to get another election scheduled, but to the 6,400 corrections officers and other corrections workers — who have been waiting to gain a voice at work — their victory was sweet vindication. On March 14, they overwhelmingly chose Alianza Correccional Unida (ACU)/Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME Council 95 as their union. ACU won 2,447 votes; the Federación de Oficiales de Custodia (FOC), a rival union that had delayed the election, garnered only 692.
An earlier ACU/SPU victory in this unit was set aside three years ago by a very questionable governmental decision. A favorable court ruling paved the way for a new election. The organizing committee prepared for the vote with workplace outreach and one-on-one house visits; among the participants were corrections officers and staff from New York's DC 37.
Council 95 represents 20,000 workers throughout the island.
