A MATter of Urgency
Member Action Teams (MATs) help fight anti-labor initiatives in California.
By Clyde Weiss
LOS ANGELES
Flush with success in contract bargaining that followed a massive one-day strike, more than 200 University of California employees gathered here one weekend last summer to prepare for battle in the political arena.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) was gunning for public employees' guaranteed pension benefits, and a November special-election ballot initiative he endorsed (often called "paycheck deception") threatened to impede unions' ability to back lawmakers who support them. To confront those and other threats, activists of Local 3299 — which represents nearly 18,000 employees throughout the 10-campus, five-hospital UC system — needed an innovative strategy plus the training to carry it through.
Local 3299 already had developed and used such a strategy to build a winning contract campaign and increase its membership dramatically. It involved Member Action Teams (MATs), essentially networks of workplace leaders who systematically communicate with and mobilize their co-workers to take action. The basic principle behind the MAT: If each leader has only a small number of individuals — generally 10-15 members — to communicate with, it becomes easier to achieve concrete results. Neither this kind of workplace activism nor the MAT concept itself are new. In MAT, leaders receive a list of specific workers to contact regularly and on a frequent basis — the key to building a powerful network that can mobilize on a moment's notice.
MATs constitute the heart of Local 3299's workplace-based activism, and have been effective in building the union: 60 percent of the workforce is now reached by MATs. The teams also have been recruited at Council 57 in Oakland and are being built in two large locals of Council 36 in Los Angeles. They also exist, under different names, in several other states.
Faced with unprecedented threats from Schwarzenegger and the special election, however, California's AFSCME leaders realized they needed an effective political outreach organization. MATs were the logical solution. "It made absolutely no sense to reinvent the political vehicle when the MAT structure already existed," explains Keith Uriarte, Council 57's organizing director. "We just needed to add one more element to it: communication for the political process."
STRATEGY FOR VICTORY. "The best way to hold a politician accountable is with votes," Local 3299 Pres. LaKesha Harrison, a licensed vocational nurse at UCLA's Santa Monica Hospital, told MAT leaders at their summer conference. Unfortunately, she noted, only about 45 percent of the union's members were even registered to vote, "and most of us who are registered don't bother to vote."
As bad as that sounded, Harrison told them something even more disturbing: When union members do go to the polls, they sometimes unwittingly "vote for politicians who oppose raises and benefits for workers."
The MATs face a daunting challenge: In a survey of Californians taken just 11 weeks before the scheduled vote, 58 percent of those questioned supported Proposition 75, a Schwarzenegger-backed effort to prohibit unions from using a portion of a member's dues or fees for political activities unless the member gives his or her annual, signed consent. The measure is punitive and designed to weaken the political clout of workers and their unions by restricting our right to communicate with our members on important issues.
Determined to increase voter registration and get people signed up to receive their ballots in the mail, Local 3299 leaders resolved to talk with as many workers as possible about the issues on the ballot. MATs made that possible — and necessary: Polls and focus groups have shown that the single most powerful factor in determining how members will vote is contact with a respected leader in the workplace.
SPREADING THE WORD. MATs already proved their worth in preparing for the union's one-day strike in April. Team leaders made sure everyone understood what to expect so they would stick together. Some members were understandably concerned about taking part in their first strike, so getting them information quickly and accurately was critical, says Julian Posadas, a former food service worker at UC/Santa Cruz who now serves on Local 3299's executive board and is a "lost time" organizer.
As a result of their efforts, says Posadas, members "took ownership of the strike." And the action proved successful. Management quickly resumed bargaining, and agreed on a contract with raises and benefits within a week (see May/June Public Employee, Page 28).
Using similar techniques but with a different message, MATs went to work to defeat Prop. 75. Their efforts paid off: The anti-union measure was rejected 53 to 46 percent on Election Day. The MATs now intend to extend their success to protect public-employee pensions; the governor has promised to sponsor an initiative that would abandon traditional pensions for newly hired state workers. In addition, Schwarzenegger himself is up for re-election next year, so MAT leaders have an opportunity to help send him back to Hollywood.
"The MAT structure is clearly the way of the future because of its personal contacts on a daily basis with the rank-and-file members," says Gail Price, a patient biller at UC/Davis Medical Center. In addition, she points out, these contacts are valuable for recruiting members to contribute to AFSCME's political and legislative fundraising program, PEOPLE.
MATs also provide a stepping stone to recruit future union leaders. Yolanda Gallegos, a 27-year-old senior household custodian at UC/Berkeley, was one of several young members who attended Local 3299's MAT conference in August. Her motivation: "I wanted to participate in the upcoming election. I want to spread the word — not just to my co-workers but also to my family, so everyone knows why this election is very important to us."
Through MATs, Gallegos and her union are on the march to a better future.
