'Will You Help Us?'

Sprinkled among ever-dominant green was a rainbow of colors as hundreds of new union members marched around the Convention floor to demonstrate AFSCME's growing organizing power.

The frenetic pace of the marchers stepping to the sounds of the O'Jays' classic hit, "Love Train," sent the Convention floor into a constant state of unabashed glee that brought to life even the most sedate onlooker.

The spirited event moved International Vice Pres. Henry Nicholas, president of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees/AFSCME District 1199C, to call repeatedly from the dais: "Will you help us?" — that is, help make AFSCME the leader in organizing the unorganized. The crowd's answer: a resounding "Yes!"

In his report to the Convention, Sec.-Treas. William Lucy sounded the same powerful theme. He beseeched the delegates to stand up and commit more resources to organizing. A resolution was subsequently passed that encourages councils and locals regu-larly to earmark 30 percent of their budgets for organizing.

Bruce Raynor, secretary-treasurer of the union UNITE, acknowledged AFSCME as the leader in the labor movement. He condemned corporate America for shifting jobs overseas and trying to privatize every service under the sun. "The only force that stands in the way of that is the American labor movement, and the movement gets its power one way — from organization," he said. "We've got to fight in ways they [corporations] don't know about."

To underscore the importance of unions, Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the National Labor Committee, held up an array of products used by Americans that are manufactured in overseas sweatshops. He praised the union for having the "guts" to fight corporate greed and declared to the delegates: "AFSCME, you're the backbone of America!"

Be It Resolved

Delegates adopted resolutions: calling on AFSCME to hold an organizing convention in 2001; stressing the importance of educating, activating, mobilizing and organizing members to win good contracts; continuing AFSCME's commitment to support the Head Start program and to unionize Head Start workers; promoting efforts to negotiate card check recognition, accretion/successorship language, employer neutrality and other items to make it easier to organize workers; dedicating AFSCME resources (at the national and council level) to organize 75,000 workers a year through a program moving 30 percent of their budgets into organizing; and mounting strategic campaigns to win first contracts.