Organizing for Power

From state to state, workers are organizing with AFSCME for a voice on the job. Here are some recent victories:

ILLINOIS

Card-check recognition gave a voice in the workplace to 248 state Toll Highway Authority workers. The clerical, technical and professional employees joined Council 31 in January.

INDIANA

Local 2065 (Council 62) grew by 111 new members — mostly custodial, financial services and patient care workers — following a weeklong organizing blitz at the Wishard Memorial Hospital in Indianapolis.

MINNESOTA

A 600-member clerical unit at the Hennepin County Medical Center joined Council 5 via card check, assisted by volunteer member organizers from three other HCMC locals. The council now represents 1,430 employees there.

NEW YORK

Twelve custodial workers at a new branch of the Public Library in the Bronx won voluntary recognition from private contractor One Source. They join DC 37.

NORTH DAKOTA

About 100 corrections officers from maximum and minimum security facilities in Bismarck have joined Council 59, becoming the union's first statewide correctional unit: ND Corrections United/AFSCME Local 2857.

OHIO

Some 50 employees at the Licking County Child Support Enforcement Agency, plus 66 Toledo fire and police communications officers, voted to join Council 8.

Eighty-five Mason City School District custodians and groundskeepers chose the Ohio Association of Public School Employees/AFSCME Local 4.

OKLAHOMA

Reinstating a collective bargaining law it struck down last July, the state supreme court paved the way for Enid city employees to join a union — AFSCME. The court upheld the legal provision allowing bargaining in cities with populations of at least 35,000.

WISCONSIN

Local 76 — one of the state's oldest — expanded when 31 city hall and public library employees in Two Rivers voted to join Council 40.