Rise, Gonna Rise and Organize
Jeane Lambie defied those who said, "You can’t organize public workers, and you can’t organize in the South." And along the way she signed up a future president.
LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
Jeane Lambie remembers the day she signed up Bill Clinton as an AFSCME member. It was early in his first term, during a meeting on a variety of issues, that then-Governor Clinton (D) told the Council 38 director, "I wish you’d fight for me like you fight for your people."
"If you were one of my people, I would fight for you," she replied. Clinton asked for a membership card. "I said, ‘When I give a card out, I expect it to be filled out on the spot,’" recalls Lambie. So he did.
Recruiting the future president was just one milestone in Lambie’s 30-year career with AFSCME. By the time she retired in 1988, she had creatively fought contracting out and had helped to desegregate public services in Little Rock. And, like many union activists, she paid for her activism with some time in jail.
Lambie surprised everyone when she scored her first major victory for the union. The year was 1967. Lambie had been working as a psychiatric technician at Arkansas State Hospital and running Arkansas AFSCME out of her apartment on a part-time basis.
"The council had nothing: $500 in debt; $13 in the treasury. We had no staff; we had no office," she said. "I saw that it was either work full time at it, or AFSCME was going down the drain in Arkansas." She left her job and set her sights on getting union dues deduction for Arkansas state workers.
She lobbied each state legislator personally. "I never will forget," she recalls. "I was talking with one representative, and when I finished, he said, ‘Ms. Lambie, I appreciate you coming and talking to me about this because I’ve been lied to’" by the bill’s opponents. Lambie’s efforts won that legislator’s vote; dues deduction passed.
It caused quite a stir. AFSCME Pres. Jerry Wurf had Lambie flown to AFSCME’s Washington, D.C., office to tell how she had done it. He gave her a grant to pay her salary and rent an office. Some called it a clothes closet, but "to me it looked good after working out of my home," says Lambie. "I was proud of it."
In 1968, when she organized the city of Little Rock, public buildings still had separate work entrances for whites and blacks. "They had water fountains the same way — and strictly segregated [public works] crews," she recalls.
"I threatened. I bluffed. I did everything to get the city to integrate the work crews," Lambie says. But the city government refused to change.
Again, Lambie decided to take action. She called John Walker, an African-American attorney who was known for his militancy — and feared. She got permission to use his name.
Then Lambie met with the city manager and said that people had complained to Walker about the city’s refusal to integrate. She told the manager that Walker had said, "Now look: If the union can’t do anything, I’m going to."
The city manager called in his staff and told them, "We have to integrate, and we have to do it right now." Within 24 hours Little Rock had integrated the work crews.
Lambie showed the same kind of courage and creativity when the union launched a strike against the Little Rock Waterworks in 1970. Seeking recognition for the union, the activist decided on a tactic that had never been tried before in the city. She brought together a coalition of union members and supporters — welfare rights activists, disabled veterans, ministers and African-American organizations — for marches down Main Street every Saturday.
The city decided to handle the protest through mass arrest. Everyone was thrown into jail: Children were even taken from their mothers and sent to Juvenile Hall. Lambie was one of the last marchers released about four hours later.
It often took nerve and a poker face to get things done in a right-to-work state without a collective bargaining law. Lambie had both.
The union had won a strike in Pine Bluff, but the mayor couldn’t accept it. He contracted out the sanitation work and told the press he’d be rid of the union. Lambie responded, "What does he mean there will be no union? Whoever takes the contract has to take us, too." It was a big bluff, but it paid off. Bidders called to see what the union would want, and she bargained a new contract with the winner. "We got a lot better treatment out of the private company," she says.
Lambie, now 75, built Arkansas AFSCME through personal relationships and one-on-one outreach. Members felt comfortable coming to her with questions, problems and suggestions. She listened and acted.
Some who saw Lambie in action called her "Council Mom." "People would tell me, ‘You just baby your people to death.’" She saw it as nurturing — not babying.
If you ask her, Lambie will say she raised two children — two sons. The truth is: She raised a generation of grateful members.
By Susan Ellen Holleran
