Picking Up the Pace
From Puerto Rico to Washington, and in lots of places in between, AFSCME activists are scoring organizing and first-contract victories.
By Jon Melegrito & Jimmie Turner
All across the nation, workers continue to mobilize to form unions with AFSCME — and, once they do so, to nail down the all-important first contracts. In most cases, affiliates have pressured state and island politicians to back off their anti-union practices and agree to our demands: fair wages and benefits, as well as the right to influence decision-making on the job.
Like runners in a relay, AFSCME activists have been grabbing the organizing baton and racing to achieve outstanding results through elections or card check. From east to west, here are snapshot views of some of our successes:
PUERTO RICO
The struggle came down to who's got more political clout. Servidores Públicos Unidos (SPU)/AFSCME Council 95 showed that it did when the General Assembly rejected Gov. Sila M. Calderón's proposed budget and sided with the union. She had recommended against full funding of the wage increases that union members had won — unleashing incessant pressure by SPU members who took their fight to the streets and into the offices of legislators.
Result? The workers secured funds for the recently negotiated first contracts in the Departamento de la Familia and the Departamento de Educación — offshoots of several years of intense organizing throughout the island.
In the confrontation between the governor and legislative leaders, key senators and House leaders vowed to reject the governor's budget unless it included the negotiated increases. A $20-billion economic package approved in Congress provides $140 million to the island. Of that, $63 million was allotted to fund the terms of the union's three-year contract. SPU's strong resolve moved the General Assembly to give what the unionized workers rightly deserved, ensuring the governor's defeat.
"This is a victory for all people in Puerto Rico," adds Annette Gonzales, president of Local 132. "Now we have the momentum to continue working for more benefits. We will use our first contract as a tool to serve that purpose."
More than 110,000 unionized workers — including nearly 25,000 SPU members —received wage increases as a result of the new funding. All first contract negotiations — involving 17 locals from 21 government agencies — are now complete.
In the meantime, SPU/AFSCME's organizing campaign for over 2,000 officers and administrative staff in the Administraciones Instituciones Juveniles is intensifying, with an election date anticipated in early August.
NEW YORK
The Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000 — our largest affiliate — has been on a roll, picking up organizing wins and other victories across a broad swath of the private sector. This despite aggressive employer opposition and interference (see related story). CSEA has successfully negotiated first contracts for several of its recently organized units, including one with 125 workers at Ellenville Community Hospital and another with 100 food service workers employed by Sodexho at State University of New York/New Paltz. "This is a big thrill for us because we were in this campaign at the ground floor, and now the building is complete," says Janice Beaulieu, first vice president of CSEA's SUNY/New Paltz local.
In early June, CSEA won recognition for a unit of 25 nurses, physicians' assistants and medical records clerks employed by Correctional Medical Services (CMS) at the Albany County jail. Over the last six months, 300 school-system and town employees — including Head Start teachers in Ulster County and teachers' assistants in the Ilion School District — chose CSEA, after the union filed representation petitions. About 60 building custodians at the Albany Association for Retarded Citizens also hooked up with CSEA.
CSEA has also been instrumental in getting the state to pass a more responsible budget by raising some taxes to avoid the drastic cutbacks in social services and education proposed by Gov. George Pataki (R). Over the summer, busloads of union activists from all over the state converged on Albany to participate in a Rally for Public Education. In addition, CSEA succeeded in temporarily stopping the proposed closure of several psychiatric centers by mounting protest actions.
PHILADELPHIA
Don't peek, but Council 47 has accomplished a new feat: organizing a unit of nude models. Declares Gary Kapanowski, president of Local 1723, "It is a first. I've checked everywhere."
In 2002, groups comprised primarily of nude models — a few others are called portrait models — got together and formed an association in hopes of getting their employers to recognize them as a collective bargaining unit. When their demands were ignored, they turned to Council 47.
Last May, 13 models from Moore College of Art and Design voted 7 to 0 to join the Green Machine. Jym Paris told the Philadelphia Daily News that his vote was "not only for myself, but for all of my fellow models and those coming up in the future."
Now 70 others from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and The University of the Arts have filed election petitions. Kapanowski says that a unit from the Art Institute of Philadelphia plans to file when a majority of its colleagues agree to union representation.
The Moore College contingent is currently preparing for first-contract negotiations. Pres. Happy Craven Fernandez, a former union member at Temple University, indicated that she's ready to start bargaining.
The workers want improvements in pay — from $11 to $20 an hour — and working conditions. Among the bad conditions: cold and dirty studios.
MARYLAND
At 12 of the state's universities and colleges, more than 6,000 employees are battling budget cuts and self-serving school administrators in an effort to complete first contracts.
Nine of those campuses fall under the University of Maryland system. Workers have been feverishly negotiating with the chancellor and the system's Board of Regents to establish a coordinated bargaining process that would eliminate separate bargaining units at each institution.
Union negotiators were able to secure seven schools. But state law gives administrators discretion to conduct the business of their respective campuses, so the University of Maryland/College Park and the University of Maryland/Baltimore refused coordinated bargaining. At St. Mary's College — which is autonomous to the university system — more than 170 workers are close to ratifying their first contract.
Like most states, Maryland is suffering a budget crunch, and Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R) is looking to cut at least $40 million in funding for higher education. But activists are leading a grassroots campaign to stop the cuts and give decision makers constructive alternatives to layoffs. They have attended finance committee meetings of the Board of Regents and met with the administrators individually.
As part of an ongoing public campaign that has drawn widespread media coverage, members have contacted legislators to demand that they reject budget cuts. And they've formed an alliance with students to demand the paring down of administrative salaries and to fight tuition hikes.
CHICAGO
Faced with an escalating campaign of illegal intimidation and threats, workers employed by Resurrection Health Care (RHC) struck back. On July 2, Council 31 filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, the Illinois Department of Human Rights and the Human Rights Commissions of Cook County and the city of Chicago.
In its complaint, Council 31 alleges that RHC management is engaging in a corporate-wide anti-union campaign. Management also changed its employee handbook, adding more restrictive policies like mandating that only English be spoken. More than half of Resurrection's workers are immigrants.
Workers at RHC — the second largest hospital system in Chicago — have been engaged in a union organizing campaign with Council 31. Resurrection Corporation owns eight hospitals and 10 nursing homes. The council is working with roughly 8,000 of the hospital system's 14,000 employees (mostly nurses, medical technicians and maintenance workers) to help them win higher wages and better working conditions.
In March, employees from six of the eight hospitals came together for their first "Organizing Summit." Says Carolyn Futrell, a nursing assistant at St. Joseph Hospital and a member of the organizing committee: "It was important that we form our union in order to improve our employment and financial well being. With our union, management will no longer be able to change rules and policies whenever it wants."
Workers are also visiting local parish priests to educate them about Resurrection's disrespect for Catholic doctrine that supports the right to organize and preaches a duty to help the poor. Resurrection has announced plans to close Saint Elizabeth Hospital, which serves one of Chicago's poorest communities. Council 31 is leading a coalition concerned with the effect this will have on services to them.
NEW MEXICO
With the ink still damp after Gov. Bill Richardson (D) signed into law a collective bargaining bill for state employees, activists were in the midst of an organizing campaign involving thousands of workers across several departments.
Former Gov. Gary Johnson (R) let a similar law "sunset," which stripped away rights from people who were used to having them. State workers, and their counterparts at the city and county levels, set out to elect a governor who would support working families. Because of their grassroots efforts, Richardson won the 2002 race and quickly honored his promise to restore collective bargaining rights to public employees.
Union activists had already launched a massive organizing campaign a few months before the monumental signing in March. Organizers conducted house calls and worksite visits, and held conferences statewide to let workers know that they could come back "home."
"When I heard that the bill didn't include another 'sunset clause' and was permanent, I fell in head first" to organize other state employees, says Tony Baraja, who works in the Department of Children, Youth and Families in Taos. "I've been all over town and to the different communities in northern New Mexico.
"Today on my break, in fact, I dropped off literature at the motor vehicle department."
The New Mexico effort has made extraordinary progress. Some 4,000 workers formed a union with Council 18 via card check, and bargaining for the entire 7,000 was set to begin in August. In addition, the council was continuing to increase membership as those bargaining sessions got underway.
WASHINGTON
For decades, state employees — some of them members of the Washington Federation of State Employees/Council 28 — couldn't negotiate economic issues in their contracts. But that changed in 2002, when 75,000 workers were granted full collective bargaining rights. The development opened the organizing spigot and a steady stream of employees has been taking advantage of the new law.
In January, 1,500 workers in the Departments of Health and Licensing were the first department staff to organize with Council 28. In each election, the majority voted 3 to 1 in favor of union representation. Next on board were 1,100 employees from the Department of Ecology. In May, they voted 512 to 281 to form a union with the council.
Meanwhile, two more groups are seeking unionization via card check. One encompasses 128 financial service employees in the Department of Social and Health Services who want to join an existing unit of 8,000 workers in their agency. The other involves more than 50 information technology specialists from the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Council 28 represents more than 35,000 workers, 4,197 were organized since 2002.
In July, 168 employees from the Health Care Authority and 122 supervisors in the Department of Licensing filed for elections.
Council 2 also continues to ramp up its organizing pace for city and county employees. One of the council's recent victories involved 550 workers from the King County Library system. Other victories have been scored in the City of Lynwood, White Salmon and Skagit County.
In addition, members of the Southwest Suburban Sewer District Employees Association voted unanimously to affiliate with Council 2.
CALIFORNIA
Success begets success — thanks to the unbroken string of wins in county-by-county home care organizing campaigns. In June, some 3,600 home care workers in Stanislaus County won recognition as a union, bringing to 45,000 the number of California home care workers in United Domestic Workers of America (UDWA)- NUHHCE, an AFSCME affiliate. It was the largest group of home care workers in the state to win through a card check.
Two months earlier, 2,700 home care workers joined the ranks of UDWA, with a record 54 percent turnout and a whopping 98 percent "yes" vote in the Imperial County unit. Next: two card-check wins — covering 140 home care workers in Trinity County and 75 in Inyo County. Another 1,800 workers in Lake County are expected to join UDWA when it files for elections in late August.
On another front, the United Child Care Union has launched a campaign to organize thousands of child care workers. President McEntee has described this initiative as a bold effort "to put AFSCME on the map as the child care union."
Meanwhile, 100 workers at the UCLA campus are fighting to leave their non-union subcontractor to join Local 3299 and become UCLA employees. Several hundred food-service workers, currently employed by Sodexho, are doing the same thing at UC/Davis. Three hundred others have already jettisoned that company at UC/Santa Cruz. The key to these battles has been an effective alliance with student activists.
Organizing: Our Next Generation
Aneil Lala and Ebony Wiresinger are among the Union Scholars whose efforts this summer are critical to helping workers gain justice and dignity on the job. Aneil, a student at Duke University, is working with the campaign in Albuquerque, N.M.; Ebony, who attends Barnard College, is assisting CSEA's campaign in New York City. They and four other energetic young people are products of a unique scholarship program operated jointly by AFSCME and the United Negro College Fund.
