Profiles in Dignity: Solid Is the Union Arlene Built
Arlene Hartley spent almost a quarter of a century building a union and fighting for the rights of New Jersey's AFSCME members. Now she says it's time to retire. But does she mean it?
HIGHLAND PARK, N. J.
Born into a union family, Arlene Hartley learned early that civil rights and union rights often go together.
“My father was a Teamster,” she recalls from her childhood. At that time, New York trucking companies hired African Americans only as helpers and would not promote them to driver positions. “This annoyed my father no end,” says Hartley. “When they took a load to Jersey, my father would let his helper drive. Then there was a strike, and the employer agreed to take back only the white workers.” Hartley’s father didn’t go back.
“Every morning, when I get up, I have to look at my face in the mirror to brush my teeth,” he told his family. “I like what I see now. If I went back, I wouldn’t like it. Those black men pay dues just as well as the white men. I can’t go back.”
Those early memories left a strong impression and a solid foundation upon which Hartley built the union in northern New Jersey. During her 24 years as a union activist — as she moved from Local 1761 rank-and-filer to steward to officer and on to executive vice president of Council 1 and president of Council 52 — Hartley built with the bricks and mortar of members and solidarity.
She increased her local’s membership from 643 to 1,700 — making it the largest AFSCME local in New Jersey. She was always proud of the high level of solidarity in her local and Council 52.
“I would tell the members, ‘This is the best for the union.’ We’d explain why, and we would ask for their support and their votes, and we always got it — 100 percent solidarity. I was so proud. I’d tell them, ‘I feel like I’m 10 feet tall.’”
Building the union was not Hartley’s paying job; it was her passion. For all those years, she held down a full-time job at Rutgers University in the registrar’s office at Livingston College — retiring as head registration clerk. And she raised five children as a single mom.
Building a union is never easy. It takes time, struggle, and sometimes as Arlene Hartley puts it, “losing my Irish temper.”
It took energy, determination and fearlessness to stand up for the workers against the university administration, but Hartley was tough. When they tried to put her down, she would say, “Please, don’t try to intimidate me. It only makes me lose my Irish temper. It’s ugly. You wouldn’t like it.” An employee relations staffer accused Hartley of being mean, but she saw it as leveling the playing field.
When she looks back over her union career, Hartley remembers winning grievances that forced management to promote by seniority instead of favoritism. She remembers pouring blood, sweat and tears into electing AFSCME-endorsed political candidates. She remembers winning agency shop at Rutgers. But most of all, Hartley remembers the strike in January of 1987.
“The strike lasted for nine days in the middle of winter,” says Hartley. The primary strike issue was increments — step increases; Rutgers was trying to do away with them. It would have been a financial blow to the workers who depended on their contractual raise and the step increases that moved them up in their job classification.
The entire university shut down. Members of Hartley’s white-collar local were joined by blue-collar Local 888 (Council 52) — with campus-wide support from faculty and students.
Even more strikers turned out than expected because Rutgers’ unions had an agency-shop agreement. About 500 fee payers — who were not union members — marched on the picket line. “Those who were out on strike and hadn’t realized they weren’t members all joined the union,” says Hartley.
There was wonderful solidarity, but Hartley still laughs at the story of “one guy who crossed the line, and then he came out. He wanted to put in a grievance because they made him do all the work. Everyone stared at him in utter amazement.” Local 888’s president handed him a sign and pointed him toward the picket line.
The workers kept the increments they had struck to save, but they won even more: respect.
“After the strike, the union got stronger,” says Hartley. “People were prouder of it, of being a union member.”
Hartley built on that solidarity to involve the members of her local and her council in area political and union struggles.
She turned out volunteers for political campaigns and for state lobbying efforts. And, whenever AFSCME wanted members to storm Capitol Hill, Hartley loaded up the buses and brought them to Washington, D.C. Her youngest son, Matthew, was involved in so many union efforts that he used to say, “AFSCME green is my blood.”
Now she is retired from her job and the presidency of Local 1761 and Council 52. But she is not really retired from AFSCME or the issues that have been such a part of her life. “I get to choose what I want to do,” she says. “That’s what I like about being retired.”
Asked what advice she would give to today’s union activists, Hartley responds, “Fight the good fight. And vote Democratic.”
By Susan Ellen Holleran
