Steppin' Up to the Plate

Luis Fuentes wanted to help put an end to the abuse of public employees in Puerto Rico. Sally Davies grew up in an anti-union family, but was later touched by union solidarity.

Angelique Tribett was moved to tears when she witnessed a pregnant farm worker explain how she had to ask permission to go to the washroom. Tony Story heard about a training program and decided to get involved.

Those are four members from different regions and different backgrounds but with one thing in common: their determination to stand up and be counted as member volunteer organizers (VOs). At the Organizing Convention, Public Employee asked them about their experiences.

CHANGE SEEKERS. Fuentes, a member of Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME, has seen enough of management intimidation in his 25 years as a public employee. He says, through an interpreter, that political patronage can run rampant in Puerto Rico: "The political parties get people jobs in the government, so they feel indebted to them. Whenever there is a change, people get fired or transferred, and there's a lot of fear.

"The people who are losing out are now turning to the union for protection because they fear reprisals from the new administration." By talking to workers, Fuentes is convinced he can drive home the point that they may face "very direct consequences" from lawmakers if they don't get involved in the union. Fuentes states: "What's made the difference for me communicating with employees is one-on-one education."

Davies, president of Local 1072 (Council 92), works at the University of Maryland, whose employees gained collective bargaining rights last May. She is organizing co-workers at campuses across the state.

This activist has come a long way. "I was raised in an anti-union, Republican family and bought all of the lies that were in the media about unions," she relates. "But I went to a union meeting as a non-member. I saw all of kinds of people there, and knew that they were people I wanted to be around."

SELFLESS ATTITUDES. "I knew right then and there what I had to do," Tribett recalls of the encounter involving the farm worker. Tribett, who works in the Chicago Police Department and is president of Local 654 (Council 31), got her basic training by participating in an internal organizing campaign. "I noticed that all of the workers in Illinois have the right to collective bargaining. So I decided that, in our police department, everyone should be a union member." Her success rate in the campaign: 99 percent.

"I'm just glad that AFSCME is taking this approach [holding an organizing convention] to bring in their rank-and-file members," she says. "It's important because it strengthens the union."

Story, who hails from Connecticut Local 387 (Council 4), got wind of a member VO training program in Kentucky and signed up. "I took the training and fell in love with it." His advice to budding member VOs: "Volunteer for a campaign that's organizing workers in your job classification. After you get your feet wet, it's like anything else — a piece of cake."

CONSENSUS. The campaigners say the member VOs enjoy a built-in advantage during home visits with prospective members. As Tribett puts it, "People tend to believe those who are more like them."

With fresh pressures on unions — President Bush eliminating important worker protections with the stroke of a pen, a struggling U.S. economy, overall decline in union membership and increased spending in defense — they all agree that the consequences of member inaction could be "dire" and "disastrous" for growth in the future.

"It would be a disgrace to let all of the gains of the past go away without a fight," says Davies. "People fought without laws to make laws. Are we just going to let those laws go by the wayside?" — J.T.