Standing on the Frontlines
With pride, dedication and energy, AFSCME activists get the job done!
By Jon Melegrito
They’re building union power across the nation—making politics work for working people and facing off against privateers. They’re standing with employees who want to form unions and have a voice at work. And in these tough economic times, they’re battling for justice on the job and motivating the next generation of AFSCME members to get involved. When it comes to drive and determination, AFSCME activists are second to none. Here are the stories of five inspiring individuals.
‘A Passion for Justice’
Janet Ramsey: Medical Laboratory Technician, University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, Local 1942, Council 24 (Wisconsin)
In her community of Prairie du Sac, Wis., Janet Ramsey is known as “the union person.” A member of Local 1942 (Council 24), the 50-year-old mother of four is a medical laboratory technician at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison. Ramsey is also focused on the future. That’s why she’s planning to spend this summer forming a girls’ lacrosse team.
But her goal goes beyond sports. “It’s about building team spirit when they are young, when their minds are open,” says Ramsey. She understands that kids who appreciate team spirit can become adults who value union solidarity. “Ten years ago,” Ramsey says, “I took my children to picket the hospital to demand a better contract.” Last year, she spurred them to campaign for Obama. They spent after-school hours and weekends waving signs and calling on other young people to vote.
Ramsey became an activist in 1986 while working for the University of Wisconsin. Feeling that she was being paid unfairly, Ramsey filed a grievance and won. “That got me all fired up,” she recalls. “Since then, I’ve learned that if we stick together and fight back, we can’t be stopped.”
She’s still fired up. Ramsey has traveled the state as a volunteer member organizer (VMO), standing with child care providers who want to unionize. She has knocked on doors, handed out fliers and made phone calls. In 2007, her efforts—and the efforts of other members like her—paid off. More than 7,000 providers won a voice with AFSCME. That win was followed by a successful fair share campaign for the administrative support employees at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, which she also helped organize. “We met over lunch and during their breaks, and I made sure they turned out to vote,” she says. An overwhelming 87 percent voted in favor of the union. To Ramsey, these two victories are “big wins, giving these workers an even greater voice in improving their working conditions.”
Asked where it all began, Ramsey recalls, “My passion for justice is what got me to volunteer as an organizer. Growing up in an anti-union family, in a conservative town—I thought there was nothing I could do to change the things that made me angry. That grievance over my pay changed all that. But I also learned you can’t do it on your own. The stories I hear when I talk to non-union workers motivate me to keep organizing.”
Ramsey worries that young workers will never learn to fight for their rights and sees students lacking in union knowledge. To help change the trend, she speaks to high school Social Studies classes. “Kids change you,” she says. “I find myself listening to them more, thrilled by their openness to learn the history of the labor movement. To see a change in their attitudes is very empowering—for me and for them.”
‘Building a Better Future’
Donald Poulin: Bus Driver, First Student Inc., Local 2458, Council 93 (Northern New England)
In a small way, Donald Poulin of Randolph, Maine, feels that letters he wrote to them might have nudged his U.S. senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, to cast two of the three Republican votes that Democrats needed to pass President Obama’s economic recovery plan. “I am delighted that I contributed in some way to making this happen,” says Poulin, a bus driver and a member of Local 2458 (Council 93).
This was not the first time that Poulin lobbied his senators. Last year, he urged them—through letters and phone calls—to vote for the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Collins and Snowe both voted in favor of the legislation. A retired paper mill worker, Poulin returned to work four years ago as a school bus operator for First Student Inc., the largest privateer of its kind in the world. Last summer, he helped organize 50 co-workers to vote for AFSCME Council 93 as their union. “We felt that the company was not doing enough to provide better benefits, like health care, for its employees,” Poulin explains. The firm contributes almost nothing toward workers’ health insurance premiums. Inspired by the success in his own workplace, Poulin is helping to organize other bus drivers in the state.
He is also trying to build a better future for the kids in his community and has joined an effort to stop the town from closing a public school. “Closures spell overcrowding for the schools that absorb the extra kids,” he says. “This means the children lose out.” Poulin also advocates for programs like Head Start, and as a member of the Knights of Columbus, he volunteers his time helping children with special needs.
He explains his dedication to children like this: “I never completed eighth grade. I had to struggle to get my GED. I don’t want my own grandchildren, and the children who ride my bus, to go through what I went through. I want them to have those things I never had.”
‘Driven to Teach’
Lamont Wilkinson: Training Technician, North Jersey Developmental Center, Local 2209, Council 1 (New Jersey)
“If you can’t come to us, we can come to you.” That’s what Lamont Wilkinson of Lisbon, N.J., tells AFSCME members who want to understand their rights in the work place. As a volunteer member educator, he travels all over the state conducting steward courses and workshops at conventions, conferences and local meetings. “I’m among a dozen volunteers who do this work because we love education, we love our union and I’m driven to teach,” says Wilkinson, a training technician for the state’s developmental center and a member of Local 2209 (Council 1).
Since the program began eight years ago, Wilkinson and his fellow member educators have trained more than 1,000 AFSCME members—mostly shop stewards—using AFSCME’s Stewards in Action curriculum. (For more on Stewards in Action, see page 11.) Wilkinson notes that the state does not teach workers their basic rights, let alone what’s in their contracts. “We need to provide our members with adequate tools to be effective,” Wilkinson says. “I’m very concerned that they often don’t have access to these skills and resources.”
He adds: “Many workers today take things for granted. They don’t know what it takes to reap our hard-earned benefits. That’s why I love to teach—to change their attitude so they’ll learn to fight and preserve their gains and win the respect they deserve.”
‘I Have No Fear!’
Betty Cotton: Corrections Officer, Norton Correctional FacilityKansas Organization of State Employees (KOSE), AFT/AFSCME local 300
Growing up in Edgewater, Colo., Betty Cotton watched bullies pick on her fifth grade girlfriends. “I couldn’t stand what was going on so I formed our own gang,” recalls Cotton of Norton, Kan. She is a corrections officer (CO) at the Norton Correctional Facility and a member of the Kansas Organization of State Employees (KOSE) AFT/AFSCME Local 300. “I was the leader. If the boys tried to stir up trouble, I’d beat them up. That ended the bullying.”
Years later, Cotton is still facing down bullies. She remembers this 1987 incident from the beginning of her career as a CO. “I reprimanded one inmate. Later that day, he brought five of his friends to my office and tried to scare me. There was only one other officer on duty, and he was somewhere else. I stood my ground and calmly told them to return to their cells. I had no fear. Somehow, I must have defused the situation because they left quietly after that.”
“In our line of work, the fear factor is always there,” Cotton explains. “But you can’t let it define you.”
Cotton knows that Norton’s 216 COs need a strong voice to defend themselves from unfair treatment. That’s why she has spent the last two years recruiting more members to KOSE. When her shift ends, she stands with cards at the gate talking to co-workers, or knocks on their doors during her days off. “They are afraid to be seen with me at the work site so I go to their homes,” she explains. “I’ve signed up everyone I’ve visited so far. But we have a long way to go. I won’t retire until all of them are on board with KOSE.”
She notes with dismay that Kansas is 49th in the nation in terms of pay and benefits for state employees. There have been no step increases for 10 years. “There was a time when we would lose an average of 20 COs in two months,” she points out. “Not having adequate and well-trained staff poses serious risks to personal and public safety.”
Despite the challenges of organizing, Cotton finds her volunteer work “very satisfying and rewarding, realizing that these individuals have a secure and safe job, that they are not going to be disposed of and destroyed by management.”
Cotton’s gang leader days may be over but there’s no doubt in her mind that the spirit that drove her to stand up against bullies remains. It’s there when she knocks on doors, makes phone calls and talks one-on-one with co-workers who simply want something better for themselves, and for their families.
“If we can’t fight for our own, nobody else will,” she declares. We need union solidarity and a strong membership to change the minds of management and our legislators.”
‘A Call to Service’
Ralph Browning: Traffic Engineer, City of Medford, Local 2261, Council 75 (Oregon)
Ralph Browning can’t remember the number of times his mother took him to soup kitchens or to voting precincts. She took him that often. “Early on, I learned valuable lessons in community service and civic responsibility,” recalls Browning, a traffic engineer for the City of Medford, Ore., and president of Local 2621 (Council 75). “My mother always told me that we’re called by our faith to serve people who are at the margins. It’s also our duty as citizens to use the ballot box to change public policies that fail to address the issues of homelessness and poverty. Compassion is not enough without justice.”
A volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, Browning devotes one Saturday each month to help build affordable homes in Jackson County where he lives. Most weekends are set aside for St. Vincent de Paul Society, a faith community that ministers to the region’s low-income residents. The rest of his free time—depending on the season or the project—finds him knocking on doors, putting up yard signs, registering voters or making phone calls to lawmakers. Last November, he campaigned for Lynn Howe (D), a retired nurse and a pro-worker candidate who came close to ousting the incumbent state representative, Sal Esquivel (R). “He’s been in office for six years and he hasn’t gone to bat for us,” Browning explains. Months earlier, Browning joined an organizing drive to help 1,200 Asante Health System hospital employees have a voice at work.
“All of my volunteer work puts me in close touch with people,” he says. “It gives me proper perspective in my job when people call to complain about not having enough traffic signs in their neighborhood or having too many. I feel good knowing that I am not a faceless bureaucrat.” He meets regularly with citizens at traffic safety committee meetings and makes recommendations about bike paths, pedestrian lanes and speed traps.
Browning says personal encounters with the public and close interactions with people who are having a tough time making ends meet have taught him to be a good listener. “That’s what makes a good organizer,” he says of his volunteer experience. “And everything I do—in our church, in our community and in our union—is a call to service. It’s to make other people’s lives better.”
