The AFSCME Family Works for Working Families

It's AFSCME's 60th year and our 32nd Convention. We're still "Leading the Fight."

In his State of the Union address, Pres. Gerald W. McEntee urged AFSCME members to fight back for themselves and every working American.

"You are ... the union that's leading the fight for American working men and women. Stand up for yourselves! Stand up for America!" he said as delegates jumped to their feet.

In his opening address to the 32nd International Convention on Monday, June 17, McEntee recognized the work of AFSCME activists in the fight for justice on the job every day.

However, AFSCME's role must take on national proportions in this election year, McEntee said. AFSCME is celebrating its 60th year under the banner "Leading the Fight."

It's more than just a slogan.

AFSCME, McEntee said, is "a family that never forgot where it came from or where it still needs to go-a family that never shied away from leading the fight.

"And that tradition has never been more important than it is right now. Because you and I-this entire union called AFSCME-are at war," he said.

"What's at stake is whether America will be a country where every family can get ahead and no worker is left behind, or whether it will be a nation where only a few make it to the top while the rest of us fight it out on the bottom," he said.

Some redecorating. The recent rash of corporate greed doesn't just affect workers in the private sector, said McEntee. (See Corporate Killers, Public Employee May/June, 1996.)

Long before AT&T laid off 40,000 workers last January, it purchased a company called NCR. "Well, it used to generate about $5 million in local income taxes in the Dayton area," said McEntee. "But after AT&T got its hands on it, the company cut about 1,000 full-time positions that meant over $1 million a year in lost tax revenue. And to the members of AFSCME Local 101 [Ohio Council 8], that meant the loss of 100 jobs in the Dayton public schools."

At the same time, the average salary for top corporate CEOs has risen to $1,700 an hour, said McEntee. They are aided and abetted by right-wingers in Congress who are willing to let workers be laid off and to cut government services.

All unions in the House of Labor must be mobilized to elect a Congress that is more sympathetic to working families, said McEntee. But to do that, AFSCME first had to promote a change in the AFL-CIO's leadership.

98-Pound weakling. "History's going to show that we did that just in time. Last year, AFSCME and a dozen other progressive unions decided if our families are going to have any chance against corporations like AT&T and men like [Speaker of the House Newt] Gingrich and [Republican presidential challenger Bob] Dole, we needed a new kind of AFL-CIO that isn't afraid to fight and that isn't afraid to win," said McEntee.

"This union helped elect governors in Maryland and Oregon, Hawaii and Kentucky. We helped elect mayors from Baltimore to San Francisco," said McEntee. And in what was at the time the most important race in America, "it was our political muscle in Oregon that gave Ron Wyden the strength he needed to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.

"Last year, organized labor was a 98-pound weakling," said McEntee. "This year, we've become the worst nightmare the right-wing and big business have ever had!"

McEntee was introduced by Sec.-Treas. William Lucy who lauded McEntee's role in promoting these changes: "When the history of the labor movement is written, it will be incomplete unless it includes the accomplishments of this man, the leader of the greatest labor union in this country."