Spotlight on Activists: Battling 'the Wolves'

ENDLETON, OREGON

Bryan Branstetter says he's just being facetious when he describes his assignments as "getting tossed to the wolves," but he admits that places like Farmington, Mo., and Pullman, Wash., are "tough territories" for volunteer member organizers like him.

A corrections officer for 14 years at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Branstetter spent two weeks in Farmington to help members stave off a decertification drive. Although the effort failed, he remains upbeat about the role he plays in organizing: "I learned that members must be involved in the union from the bottom up."

Pullman presented an equally daunting challenge. Asked to help strengthen a local with only 180 members, Branstetter spent several days in the rural community talking one on one with workers at a land-grant college. "About 4,000 workers are not unionized," he says. "Many come from poor families. So the potential for union building gave me an adrenalin rush." The hard part was trying to find addresses.

Branstetter's volunteer organizing stint also took him to three cities in New Mexico. There, he knocked on doors for two weeks in a massive and successful effort to help state workers regain the collective bargaining rights they lost in 1999. "Their fighting spirit inspired me," he recalls. "The best part of AFSCME is that we, the members, run it."

He adds: "If we don't organize, we don't build. If we don't build, we don't get bigger. That's how we gain more power."

— Jon Melegrito