Organizing for the Future

By Jimmie Turner

The fabric of union solidarity remains durable when more workers are brought into the fold.

The political landscape has changed as workers are facing an erosion of precious workplace protections. A right-to-work bill here, a lost ergonomic standard there can add up to big trouble. So the members decided to increase union strength via organizing, and AFSCME listened.

In 1998, the union’s biennial Convention delegates passed a resolution mandating a formal organizing program. With the ink still wet, activists revved up the pace of organizing the unorganized. Since that time, more than 70,000 workers have joined AFSCME.

The largest portion of organizing success stems from the union’s roots: the public sector. But growing numbers of unprotected workers are trapped in private industries. Because their wages and benefits can barely keep up with the cost of living, they are seeking out unions.

PAST IS FUTURE. AFSCME "invented" public-sector organizing in the 1930s when Wisconsin employees led a lobbying effort that defeated a bill aimed at dismantling the state’s civil service system. In 1936, they received an AFL charter for their union — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Much has changed in the job market since then, but the union has continued to blaze a trail for public employees. AFSCME has forged collective bargaining rights for workers in more than 30 states and is striving to provide the same opportunities in all 50 plus Puerto Rico.

The union attracts workers who demand fairness and a voice at work. And now that AFSCME has put major resources into organizing efforts, workers in numerous industries and fields are making contact with union activists.

GOING PUBLIC. Organizing in Puerto Rico’s public sector has gained traction in the last two years because of a new collective bargaining law that covers more than 140,000 workers. In the 1960s and ’70s, 28 percent of the workforce was unionized. That changed in the 1970s and 1980s, when manufacturing firms left the island, diluting union power.

By organizing public employees, Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/ AFSCME is helping to lead a resurgence in the Puerto Rican labor movement. Workers from the Departments of Education, Natural Resources, Family Services, Transportation, and Corrections and Rehabilitation have sent out the call for unionization.

Organizing used to be a cumbersome task in the commonwealth. Now, thanks to labor law reform, only a plurality of workers’ votes is needed for a certifi-cation election, and separate votes are no longer needed for certification and the choice of a union. Upcoming elections will cover roughly 18,000 Family Services and Corrections employees. Employees from Education and Natural Resources, members of SPU, have won both rounds and are currently in first contract talks.

At Maryland’s 16 state colleges and universities, a 30-year struggle has brought collective bargaining rights for some 8,000 employees, and they have begun to organize. More than 500 of them belong to AFSCME Local 1072 (Council 92), but a state law gave university presidents autonomous authority to direct the schools. Without union consent, the Board of Regents could change rules at a whim.

With a bill in hand, hundreds of university employees from across the state are working at a frenetic pace to get their colleagues to sign cards and press for elections to affiliate with AFSCME. "We’re very optimistic that we’re going to win this," says Sally Davies, Local 1072 president. "AFSCME has been around for a long time and is the only union in the state that’s done anything. We’re going back to our roots to continue the work of the union."

A MIX OF POLITICS. Activists and organizers in Maryland, as well as New Mexico, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri, have discovered that politics and organizing mix well. When elected officials haven’t moved quickly enough to endorse or approve collective bargaining bills, members have invaded city halls and state assemblies to get their points across.

Maryland provides a good example. A bill covering university employees, similar to the one signed into law last May, was rejected by the General Assembly in 2000. In 1999, a filibuster excluded the same group from legislation that gave bargaining power to other state workers.

But university employees never wavered. For three years, they converged on the capitol each Monday night during the General Assembly session to lobby their representatives. Workers testified before committees and swamped lawmakers with e-mails, letters and phone calls demanding change.

In Albuquerque, N.M., and Indiana-polis and Richmond, Ind., city officials wouldn’t honor city ordinances that authorized collective bargaining for employees. Workers successfully organized their units under AFSCME.

When Albuquerque Mayor Jim Baca vetoed a measure that directed city administrators to hold an election for the workers, union advocates approached the city council and forced it to override the veto unanimously. Richmond Mayor Dennis Andrews abruptly resigned when media scrutiny and pressure from labor proponents forced him to adhere to the ordinance. His successor, Shelley Miller, threw out the workers’ first election only to see them come back and vote overwhelmingly to form a union with AFSCME; she certified the election shortly thereafter.

EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGES. Within the last four months, governors from Kentucky and Missouri have signed executive orders giving state employees limited collective bargaining rights. The Public Employees Alliance of Kentucky, led by AFSCME, held talks with Gov. Paul E. Patton (D). He then signed a resolution that establishes a Governor’s Employee Advisory Council. Kentucky’s 30,000 state employees can now elect a union and negotiate workplace improvements.

Missouri Gov. Bob Holden (D) inked a deal that benefits 33,000 of his state’s employees. There, too, AFSCME pulled together a coalition of other labor unions to persuade the governor to do what’s in the best interest of public workers — and by extension the general public. Before the executive order was signed, Council 72 members had the right to "meet and confer" with supervisors but no guarantees that their concerns would be addressed. They now have a tool to negotiate better wages, benefits and working conditions.

UNION COMES ‘HOME.’ For years, there’s been a silent group — primarily women and people of color — that provides for the needs of the elderly and disabled. Its members are called home health care aides. Together with the United Domestic Workers of America (UDW), an AFSCME affiliate, the aides ended their decades of silence in California two years ago.

The California Home Care Council, which includes UDW, lobbied Gov. Gray Davis (D) for support of a bill that creates an official employer for home care workers who had been treated as independent contractors. Davis signed it, and all counties must incorporate the policy by 2003.

Working in tandem, 12,000 caregivers — people who are underpaid and have no fringe benefits — from San Diego and the union successfully pressured the county board of supervisors to approve two ordinances: one establishing a public authority as the workers’ employer of record; the other opening the door to organizing and collective bargaining. By forcing lawmakers to act now, the union can expand organizing into other counties.

Just before the San Diego board signed the pact last June, more than 500 workers and activists rallied at the county building. The resulting vote was unanimous: 5-0.

After forming a union with AFSCME, home health aides in New Jersey are reaping the benefits of representation. Hundreds of workers came to the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (NUHHCE)/ AFSCME and founded Home Health Care 1199/AFSCME.

This June, the New Jersey legislature gave the state’s 28,000 home health aides a $1 per hour wage hike. Law-makers passed a budget that increases the rate the Medicaid program pays for home health services as a salary increase for the caregivers. To ensure that they were heard, thousands of workers voiced their demands at a state capitol rally.

Up the New Jersey Turnpike in New York City, 1,250 home health and personal care aides overcame a one-year intimidation campaign by their employer, Allen Health Care Agency, and voted to team up with DC 1707.

Through all of these success stories, it’s clear that the prospect of union representation has spurred members and workers to act. These groups recognize that AFSCME leads the way in taking on management and negotiating fair contracts that pay livable wages and provide good benefits.

PUBLIC TO PRIVATE. AFSCME is making headway in organizing the private sector. That is far from an easy task. Private employers are more apt to thwart workers by hiring union-busting firms and spending freely on anti-union campaigns.

Activists and organizers have therefore devised more sophisticated and strategic techniques to reach out to workers seeking union protection. Those techniques are working. In fact, one-third of AFSCME’s organizing victories in 1999 and 2000 came in the private sector. The union has established a beachhead in such private fields as mental health, food service, Head Start and nursing.

In Illinois, direct caregivers in facilities that house developmentally and mentally disabled patients have finally broken through and established a union. Council 31 organizers and workers at two sites — the Little City Foundation in Palatine and Trinity Services Inc. in Joliet — have fought years of intimidation and gotten employers to agree to neutrality. Once that happened, workers became more comfortable with organizing colleagues, and the 700-plus members voted 4-1 for a voice in the workplace.

Caregivers had far-ranging concerns: low pay and few benefits, lack of seniority and grievance procedures, and the status of at-will employees. Now workers have convinced managers that union-backed employees are more efficient and productive because they have a say in how their work gets done. "We’re not out to break a place," says Little City’s Andy Fekete, who helped negotiate a first contract with his employer. "Our victory meant a loss of control by management, but they were willing to accept that. A good manager shouldn’t fear it."

In all, at private, state-funded mental health agencies in Illinois, more than 3,500 caregivers — about one-fifth of the workforce — have joined Council 31. The successful multi-agency campaign is sending a clear message that private-sector employees are seeking to affiliate with strong unions.

HUNGRY FOR A UNION. Food service workers employed by some of the biggest names in privatization are taking matters into their own hands. In Oregon and New York, private contractor Aramark was forced to the bargaining table after the company’s food handlers organized under AFSCME.

At Oregon’s Portland State University, the staff of the campus dining hall was without health insurance because premiums were too high. With the aid of a one-day boycott by student protesters, workers voted for a fresh start with Council 75. In New York, food service workers from Harrison High School were dissatisfied with paltry wages paid by Aramark and decided to form a union with the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000.

Aramark isn’t the only privateer feeling the heat from employees. Cafeteria workers in the Union City, N.J., school district organized under 1199J NUHHCE because their employer, Chartwell Inc./Compass Group USA, didn’t offer paid time for school breaks and holidays. Auxiliary Services Corporation hired a union-busting firm to squash an organizing campaign by the food handlers at the State University of New York at Cortland. But the workers voted to side with CSEA; the new members are fighting reductions in their employer’s pension contributions, increases in their health care premiums and unilateral shift changes.

A GOOD ‘HEAD START.’ Although state and federal funds support Head Start programs run by private agencies, workers’ pay and benefits are inadequate. Also, when it comes to making decisions about programs that affect the children they care for, management undervalues their experience and leaves them out of the loop. Not surprisingly, they have been calling AFSCME — now the leading Head Start organizer — for help.

In addition to our organizing efforts, AFSCME is trying to raise Head Start salaries. We lobby local, state and federal officials to increase funding for the program, and alsodevelop training and professional standards.

In two years, more than 3,500 employees of Head Start have organized under AFSCME and its affiliates. Staffers in New Jersey, California, Oregon, Indiana and Ohio convinced their co-workers through house calls and job-site visits that a union gives them the best platform to air their concerns about their treatment and the care of pre-school children.

Some 2,000 workers in Ohio organized and teamed up with the Ohio Association of Public School Employees/AFSCME Local 4. Using the Ohio Public Records Act, the union helped the campaign by requesting from Head Start employers the names, telephone numbers and addresses of all employees. Today, workers from nearly 20 Ohio counties have been organized.

When AFSCME delegates resolved to formalize organizing, Ohio’s Christine Dandrow from the Stark County Head Start program told thousands of union supporters at the International’s 2000 Convention: "Your future was tied to our future, and you decided that the future was now. Our lives are better because of your commitment, and we’re committed to building a bigger, stronger union."

PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS. With ever-growing numbers of health maintenance organizations, private firms are employing large numbers of registered nurses. Yet RNs often find themselves working involuntary overtime and left out of crucial decisions involving patient care.

They have tried to organize in the past but have been blocked by unprin-cipled employers using intimidation tactics. The union has adapted a bargaining-to-organize strategy that has paved the way for nurses to flock to AFSCME in droves. Workers and management sit down together and agree to three fundamental organizing rules: card checks, neutrality and accretion/area-wide clauses. If a majority of the workers express a desire to join a union, the employer must let the process take its course without interference.

The practice has worked extremely well in California. Unions have signed onto a partnership with Kaiser Permanente, which remains neutral during organizing campaigns and then recognizes card checks.

Seven hundred nurses who work for Kaiser in Anaheim are members of the United Nurses Associations of California (UNAC)/AFSCME. The organizing fever has spread to RNs employed by another for-profit giant — Tenet Healthcare Corp. — in Lakewood and Irvine, and to San Diego, where more than 2,500 nurses work for Sharp HealthCare. All are UNAC members.

JUST THE BEGINNING. There have been many other organizing success stories in regions and industries around the country. Through trial and error, AFSCME has devised proven models that coach volunteer and staff organizers in all facets of the craft: first contracts, house calling, leafletting, neutrality and more. Word is spreading fast to unprotected workers that unions produce fair wages and benefits, and equalize workplace disputes with management.

The playing field is being leveled, and employees are huddling with the union to diagram big scoring plays.