Public Employee Press

Political Action
Mobilize

Stewards and political activists launch a campaign against contracting out and prepare for the fall election.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Hundreds of members enlisted to be the frontline troops in a citywide mobilization to combat contracting out, protect public services and save jobs.

Over 500 shop stewards, Political Action Committee members and others left a meeting on June 11 fired up and carrying bundles of union leaflets that they had volunteered to distribute in communities citywide. The fliers call on the city to cut the colossal waste of contracting out instead of reducing public services.

“War has been declared on civil service employees,” DC 37 Director Lillian Roberts told the activists, “and we have to fight back and win!”

“When someone can come in from the outside and sit side-by-side with you on the job — a consultant or a contractor’s employee — that’s union busting, and we have to put an end to it,” she said.

In addition to the immediate drive against contracting out, the campaign will lay the groundwork for DC 37’s get-out-the-vote work in the 2009 mayoral race, which will intensify after Labor Day.

The activists will be invited to meet with union leaders over the summer to map out the strategy for the mobilization. They will participate in coordinating committees to run outreach campaigns in each of the city’s five boroughs.

“We want to hear from you on how we can best reach out to your communities,” Political Action Director Wanda Williams told the crowd of hundreds at the combined Stewards Mobilization Committee and Political Action Committee meeting on June 11 at DC 37 headquarters that kicked off the campaign.

At the lively meeting, PAC Chair Lenny Allen briefed members about the union’s political objectives and concerns about the fiscal year 2010 budget passed in June (see 'Budget saves 1,500 jobs; layoffs still loom').

Throughout the meeting, members and retirees used a bank of computers to fire off electronic messages to their elected representatives and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, opposing the budget’s failure to cut the $9 billion allocated for contracting out in order to save workers’ jobs and public services. (Go to www.dc37.net to tell City Hall to cut private contractors, not public services.)

The city is filling the positions of many laid off union members with nonunion workers employed by contractors, Roberts said. “We should have 50,000 more members,” said Roberts, commenting on how the “shadow government” workforce has mushroomed in recent years.

The activists also heard from Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido, the author of “Massive Waste in a Time of Need,” the union’s most recent white paper study about contracting out.

He pointed out that the union’s investigation of contracting not only uncovered outrageous waste and corruption but also found unscrupulous temp agencies frequently paying their employees who do city work less than the local Living Wage Law mandates.

Sue Levitan and Don Dileo of DC 37’s parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, discussed organized labor’s support for health-care reform and legislation to make union organizing easier; they appealed to the activists to encourage co-workers to contribute to AFSCME’s political action fund, PEOPLE (see 'PEOPLE contributions save jobs').

The mobilization plays into the union’s media campaign and lobbying to save public services and to slash over $9 million wasted on a shadow government of 100,000 consultants and contractors.

The grassroots mobilization against contracting out joins the media campaign to influence public opinion that the union launched in late May.

The media campaign includes subway ads that show union members on the job for New Yorkers, attack the city’s use of outside contractors and urge taxpayers to join the union in its fight to protect public services. It also includes a radio ad in which Roberts blasts contracting out and another that shows the tragedy that could result from city efforts to wipe out Local 371 jobs at the Administration for Children’s Services and hand their work to private agencies.

In late May, the union dispatched a strike force of 150 members and staffers into the streets during the morning and evening rush hours to distribute 18,000 leaflets attacking contracting out.

Then on Sunday, May 31, DC 37 union activists flocked to neighborhoods near three major churches. They carried the union message against contracting out to parishioners of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, the Allen A.M.E. Church in Jamaica, Queens, and the Christian Cultural Center in East New York, Brooklyn, where on March 23 Mayor Bloomberg held the first public event of his re-election campaign.

“This initiative goes beyond the immediate budget and political issue,” said Barbara Ingram-Edmonds, director of field operations. “It’s about building a lasting union, giving us a strong presence in our workplaces and communities.”

Many of the activists who participated in the leafleting campaign also attended the June 11 meeting at union headquarters, where member after member rose to denounce city contracting out of the work of civil servants and joined union leaders in calling for an aggressive campaign to protect public services. Associate Director Oliver Gray moderated the extensive section of the meeting devoted to members’ questions and statements, some of which are published on these pages.

“We have to fight together and show that we are one,” said Elizabeth Thompson, a Local 1549 member.