Public Employee Press

50,000 stronger
Activists become organizers in a nationwide campaign to increase union membership in the face of the right-wing attack on the labor movement.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES



Seventy activists participated in a Saturday training session that prepared them to join DC 37's campaign to reach out to municipal workers who haven't joined the union.

The mobilization is part of "50,000 Stronger," a nationwide effort of DC 37's 1.6-million-member parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Muncipal Employees.

As the right-wing assault on unions intensifies, AFSCME affiliates like DC 37 are running "internal organizing" campaigns to encourage greater membership involvement in union activities.

In the following weeks, the activists returned to their workplaces to talk about the union and urge agency-fee payers to join. (Agency-fee payers are workers who pay dues but haven't joined the union, either unintentionally or for philosophical or political reasons.) Under state law, workers who benefit from union representation must pay their "fair share" for services, but they don't have to join the union.

The Volunteer Member Organizers trained in May are urging agency-fee payers to join by pointing out that, although their fee entitles them to basic union services, such as workplace protections, collective bargaining representation and job-related legal protection, by not being members they are losing out on important benefits, including the right to vote on contracts and participate in union elections.

At the conference, DC 37 and AFSCME leaders and staff discussed the challenges facing the labor movement and explained how signing up agency-fee payers will make the union stronger in protecting employees and negotiating pay and benefits. They led activists through exercises designed to help them carry the union's message into the workplace, educate co-workers about the benefit of union representation and encourage them to participate in union activities.

Unions: the last line of defense

"The union is the last line of defense against those who would make a profit from the kind of humiliation my mother was subjected to as a garment worker," said DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido, sharing how his mother's hardships shaped his decision to become a union leader. "Ultimately what has motivated all of us to be here today is not to make money but to help people. What's happening with the attack on the union is personal to me - and I'm sure it is to you as well."

Jim Cullen, the assistant director of AFSCME's Eastern Region office in Pittsburgh, gave a talk on the effort of right-wing interests and their allies to weaken or destroy public service unions. Their goals include profiting from privatized government services, cutting taxes for business and the rich and smashing unions to drive down working people's wages.

Cullen noted that unions represented about a third of the workforce back in the 1950s. Since then, anti-union groups have succeeded in reducing union representation in the private sector to about 7 percent of the workforce. Now they're targeting public-employee unions, where the representation rate is 35 percent. AFSCME's membership in Wisconsin plummeted after 2011 when right-wing Gov. Scott Walker gutted collective bargaining rights.

One of the latest attacks on public-employee unions is the Harris v. Quinn case brought before the U.S. Supreme Court by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
The lawsuit aims to let Illinois home-care workers opt out of membership in their union, even though a majority of their co-workers have voted to join the Service Employees International Union. A court decision against the union could cripple public-employee unions financially by ending the "fair share" system that requires those who benefit from union representation to pay for union services.

The foundation is the legal arm of the National Right to Work Committee, whose agenda is to destroy unions and workers' collective bargaining rights. The foundation, Garrido said, has a war chest of $78 million to encourage workers to sue their unions to cancel dues and membership.

800 nationwide activists

Responding to the attacks, AFSCME has developed a strategy that includes organizing new members, building up a network of community allies, working with labor-friendly politicians and strengthening union locals through efforts such as the "50,000 Stronger" campaign, which is building an army of 800 VMOs nationwide to sign up a third of its 150,000 agency-fee payers as members.

So far in 2014, Garrido said, DC 37 has recruited 6,000 of its 26,000 agency-fee payers as members and aims to sign up half of them to exceed its target for the "50,000 Stronger" campaign by the time of the AFSCME convention in July.

Tsika Pasipanodya, an education coordinator from AFSCME headquarters in Washington, and AFSCME New York State Field Director John English explained approaches VMOs should use in their meetings with individual co-workers: VMOS should introduce themselves to co-workers, listen to their concerns, discuss the union's mission, assess their co-worker's support and urge them to take action by signing a green membership card.

DC 37 council reps served as facilitators when the VMOs worked in groups. Reps Madonna Knight and Yesenia Villanueva led role-playing sessions. Garrido and DC 37 Field Operations Director Barbara Edmonds described the worksite organizing efforts and recruitment blitzes scheduled after the conference.

VMOs expressed their enthusiasm about helping strengthen the union internally, increase its membership and build its corps of activists.

"I know what the union has done, which is to get me out of situations where my rights were being violated," said Erik O'Brien, vice president of American Museum of National History Local 1559.

"Saturday is my day off and I should be riding my bicycle today. But I have to be here. I'm seeing what's happening with Harris v. Quinn and the auto workers' defeat in the Tennessee organizing drive. I am the type of person who, if you see something you don't like, you act."

Fighting back

Human Resources Administration clerical worker Cheryl Barno said, "I came here to get information about what's going on. I am going to let my co-workers know what needs to be done and explain how we need to take a stand because we are under attack."

"I really feel an urgency to building up the union," said Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 member Liz Eastman, a City Planner Level 2 and financial secretary of the local's chapter at the Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development. "The union movement is going down. I feel a lot of young people and even people in my generation don't understand the importance of unions."

Eleanor Menzies, a Local 768 member and Social Worker Level 3 at Woodhull Hospital, said she attended the conference because she wanted to get more involved.
"I don't want to just talk about things, I want to act," she said, in a statement that perfectly captures the hope of the VMOs' mission.