Public Employee Press


DC 37/AFSCME STRONG
ENGAGE & EDUCATE:Campaign hits college campuses

There's lot more enthusiasm now. I can feel the excitement growing among the members.
— Martha Thames, AFSCME Organizer


By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Hundreds of union workers and their supporters rallied in front of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Manhattan office on March 10 and demanded a new contract for the 10,000 members who work for the City University of New York. The following day union activists took their campaign for a new contract to Bronx Community College, where they met with more than 75 fellow DC 37 members.

Mavis Hastick, a member of Local 384, attended the lunch-time campus meeting and the rally the previous day.

"I thought we had a great turnout," said Hastick, who traveled to the mid-town rally with five coworkers. "Now we have to keep the momentum going."

Campaign hits hospitals too

Custodian Orlando Rivera, a member of Local 1597, came to the lunch-time meeting and was one of the many members who signed a petition to be delivered to the governor. Rivera, a former shop steward, has worked at CUNY for more than two decades and has seen drastic changes on their Bronx campus.

"The administration has added more buildings, but they haven't added more staff," explained Rivera. The Bronx campus is spread out over 45 acres and is the only community college in the country registered as a national landmark. Instead of hiring more staff to maintain the growing campus, the administration hired a private company to do the work, Rivera said.

During the lunch-time meeting, DC 37 Organizers Anna Nowlan and Nicole Laing-Garcia recruited 10 volunteers to start a new Member Action Team at the Bronx campus.

"This team will serve as the liaison between the union and the workers on the campus," Nowlan said of the new group of activists.

The Bronx organizing session was one of 25 meetings held during March on CUNY campuses all over the city. Union activists met with members at the College of Staten Island, Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, and La Guardia Community College and the CUNY Law School in Queens to mobilize support for a new contract for CUNY workers who have been without a contract for six years.

"There's lot more enthusiasm now. I can feel the excitement growing among the members," said Organizer Martha Thames, who attended the March 16 meeting at CUNY Law School. Thames is part of a team of organizers from DC 37's parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who have come to New York City to lend support to the union's contract fight.

In addition to the meetings held at CUNY campuses, the activists also organized lunch-time sessions with hospital workers at Harlem Hospital Center in Manhattan and Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. In his proposed budget Gov. Cuomo wanted to shift $476 million in Medicaid costs to the city but later backed of the proposal. Union activists are fighting for a more equitable funding formula to provide extra revenue to struggling public hospitals.

To find out about future lunch-time meetings and to volunteer for the "Stop Starving CUNY" campaign, visit the union’s website at www.dc37.net.