Workers Get Serious About 1996 Election

AFSCME at the Dawn of a New Political Era

Wichita Falls, Texas

Truddy Lowe quietly grooms her horse as the sun rises over Texas pastures rolling to the horizon.

"The right-wing politicians think we make too much money," she says. On days off, long rides through the countryside on her Arabian mare Zali burn off the tensions of working in one of the most dangerous jobs in America.

"If they win," she tells visitors, "I'm afraid the November elections might hurt my family."

Like millions of American workers this election season, Lowe says she's rubbed raw by the rhetoric and political agenda of the conservative right. It doesn't help that Texas workers are bound by some of the most regressive labor laws in the country, where it's actually a crime for the state to engage in collective bargaining.

"Conservatives like [Republican Presidential candidate Robert] Dole talk about cutting government spending," says the 34-year-old. "What he's really talking about is taking jobs away from working people like me."

Lowe is one of a handful of women correctional officers (COs) at the maximum security James V. Allred Unit of the Texas Depart-ment of Criminal Justice's 3,000-bed facility outside of town. She is also steward for AFSCME Local 3963 and serves on the executive board, and is quick to tell visitors that Texas COs haven't had a raise in six years.

Like most of her fellow officers, she works a mandatory four-day, 48-hour week, locked in with the all-male prison population from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. She gets one 30-minute break a day from her job guarding serious offenders.

Prisoners have thrown urine and spat at her. Recently a prisoner broke a fellow woman officer's jaw after she pushed him when he tried to kiss her. Because of prisoners' privacy rights, Lowe says, COs have no way of knowing after an attack whether their assailant is infected with HIV, tuberculosis or hepatitis.

Her annual pay is $24,000.

For Truddy Lowe and other AFSCME members, this election is an opportu-nity to change things for the better. Like so many other working families these days, they are uneasy, working harder and longer but not getting ahead.

One thing they know: In 1994, conservative voters created a Newt Gingrich-led right-wing Congress that has threatened just about everything unions have fought for this century. Now working people have a chance to repair the damage.

By supporting pro-worker candidates and making sure to vote, workers can preserve government that looks out for the interests of ordinary people rather than and big corporations.

The Numbers Game. A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) confirms what many working people have sensed: Much of the economy may have picked up in recent years, but wages for 80 percent of American working people continue their long spiral downward.

High school graduates like Lowe entering the workforce for the first time have seen hourly wages decline 7 percent between 1989 and 1995, according to the EPI study. And if measured against 1979 wages, pay for today's male high school graduates is down an eye-popping 27.3 percent from a generation earlier, while today's working women are paid 18.9 percent less than their mothers made in 1979.

Families don't fare much better. Federal statistics show that 95 percent of all families today earn $2,168 less on average than they did in 1989. At the same time, income for the top 1 percent of families soared 78 percent.

Not unexpectedly, many workers view such disparities as unfair.

"No question," says George Marshall, 44-year-old chief steward for AFSCME Local 2620, Bargaining Unit 19, at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County, Calif., "it's all about money and those who have it."

Conservatives who want to see this inequality continue are "spending big money" to unseat "candidates who look out for working people," says Marshall, a licensed clinical social worker.

Marshall believes worker awareness of this threat has "energized" his local for the November elections.

AFSCME members are running a voter registration campaign and pushing hard for President Clinton and for congressional and state assembly candidates who'll stand with working people.

"If we lose another Democrat in Congress," says Marshall, "union people are going to find one less friend when time comes to pass on the things we think are important."

A Turing Point. For Pam Brodersen, RNP, the election represents a possible turning point in the way America treats its elderly. The problem lies in extremist Republican efforts "to take money from Medicare," she says. "I personally do not believe our seniors should have to choose between food and their medication. It's horrible."

Brodersen is a 41-year-old registered nurse practitioner in the Obstetrics/ Gynecology Department of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower, Calif. She's active in the United Nurses Associations of California (UNAC), an AFSCME affiliate, and helps chair the union's political action committee.

"I'm very supportive of the Democrats fighting the Republicans every time they want to strip money away from these programs," she says, "I think it's time we have some sort of national health care plan, not just for the destitute, but people in the middle, the working poor and working classes."

So this election she's leafletting her community--"a very conservative neighborhood, I'm afraid," she said--and helping raise money for UNAC by selling quilted pot holders.

Brodersen's even working on her husband Stephen, a Republican, to "maybe vote for Clinton this time."

Feeling Better Off. President Clinton gets high marks from Jan Place, 40, a mother of three "tall, jack-pine boys," and an executive board member of AFSCME Council 40 in Wisconsin. She's a family economic support lead specialist at the St. Croix County Human Services Department in New Richmond, and is quick to report that "the economy's improved in Wisconsin since President Clinton was elected."

"My worry today is that people might not realize that they're better off than they were four years ago," she says. While the econ-omy is gradually getting stronger, the damage caused by the policies of the 1980s lingers on, and "complacency is what we have to fight."

Unbalanced Benefit. According to government data, while the stock market is at record highs, only a relative handful of Americans are reaping the benefits.

For example, just 29 percent of American households own stock valued at $2,000 or more. Half of all stock in the U.S. is owned by only 5 percent of households, while the bottom half of all American households own a meager 5 percent of the nation's stock.

Such economic inequality isn't lost on Texan Truddy Lowe.

"If we're going to talk about 'family values' in America this election, we have to start with the fact that working families are suffering too darned much in this economy," she says.

At the same time, the agenda set by the political right "seems to be threatening things" that are of great importance to working people, "like Social Security, job safety, and care for the elderly and children."

A real concern in Wichita Falls, she says, "is the growing number of people who can't pay the rent or buy food. People are frustrated and they should be."

Voters this November need to remember that if economic rewards are shared more fairly it will help all of us.

"If we get a raise, we're going to spend it in this community, not invest in Wall Street," says Lowe.

Worker Friendly. In Portland, Ore., Gary Rowell is troubled "by the anti-worker, 'hateful' nature of some of the conservative right."

"Here in Oregon," says the 36-year-old father of three, "we've got a dedicated group of right-wingers fighting against everything working men and women have earned in this country."

Rowell chairs AFSCME Local 328's membership and political action committees and works as the labor/management cooperative administrative coordinator at Oregon's Health Sciences University.

Republican domination of the state house has diminished workers' basic economic rights, he says. "Bargaining laws have been manipulated, threats made to withdraw the right to organize here, even to have unions for government workers."

"We're raising hell up here this election," says Rowell. "They don't need to agree with us all the time, but candidates need to listen to us. And it's not just 'us against the Republicans.' It's not partisan at all, but a question of which candidates are willing to hear working people as we try to protect ourselves and our kids in the 21st century."

Rowell's local actively supported the election of Democratic Congressman Ron Wyden to fill the vacated Senate seat of Republican Bob Packwood.

"Now the challenge is to support Clinton and other progressives," he says, "despite a ton of Republican money supporting the anti-union candidates."

Echoing the sentiment is Lowe in Wichita Falls, who sees the job this November as simplicity itself.

"We've got to get into the public eye about doing the right thing in this country," she says.

As November elections approach, Lowe and her husband Tom, a union machinist, work harder than ever to do just that. In August, they organized 12 AFSCME stewards who were deputized at the county courthouse as voter registrars. In Texas, deputized citizens can register voters on the spot for the general election.

Every delivery, sales and service person entering the Allred prison grounds is "being registered" by AFSCME volunteers, Lowe says, broadly smiling, "and we're at high school football games, too, and we set up tables at the WalMart on weekends and evenings. We're even visiting ... retirement communities in the area."

"It's about reaching working people. People who really have a big stake in how this election turns out," she explains.

"We can win this if we stick together and remind our neighbors what it is that made America great," said Truddy Lowe.

"Our jobs depend on it."

By Ray Lane