Washington - Long-Sought Organizing Victory Achieved

It took eight years, but Local 120 (Council 2) Pres. John Ohlson finally achieved his goal of helping a group of Tacoma city workers win the same rights and benefits as their union sisters and brothers.

Persistence Wins - Local 120 Pres. John Ohlson. (Photo credit: Council 2)

It took eight years, but Local 120 (Council 2) Pres. John Ohlson finally achieved his goal of helping a group of Tacoma city workers win the same rights and benefits as their union sisters and brothers.

Ohlson realized in 2002 that 28 software employees were doing work covered by the local’s contract, yet weren’t included in it. City officials argued those workers would eventually be reassigned to other, non-union job classifications once their software work was finished in 18 months.

Ohlson, a principal technical software analyst, maintained the group should be allowed to join the union since they would continue to manage the software even then. City officials refused, and “even offered me a pay raise if I were to abandon it. I said, ‘No thank you,’” Ohlson recalls.

A joint labor committee negotiated a compromise: Any new positions would be union jobs as long as the employees did union-covered work.

Ohlson kept at it for the next four years, even as some workers quit and the rest were reclassified as business analysts to keep them out of the union. Finally, this year, an election was held and Ohlson’s determination paid off: A majority of the analysts voted to join the local, which now has more than 700 members.