Public Employee Press

Thousands of fee payers join DC 37
DC 37 has exceeded targets for recruiting new members

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Thousands of union fee payers have signed up to be members, strengthening DC 37 and ensuring that they will be eligible to vote on the new economic agreement the union and the city are negotiating.

The workers have joined as District Council 37 reaches out to agency fee payers - workers who pay mandatory fees to cover the cost of union services but haven't enrolled as members.

"We are very happy these folks have decided to join," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said. "Now, as new members, they will be able to participate in the ratification vote on the new contract. By not signing up before, they were in effect disenfranchising themselves."

Membership also means the new union cardholders will be eligible to vote in elections for leaders of their locals.

In addition, the new members will be entitled to benefits that might be offered exclusively by their locals, including, for example, tuition reimbursement, disability policies and scholarships. Members also are entitled to an array of benefits offered by DC 37's 1.6 million-member parent union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the AFL-CIO.

Training activists

District Council 37 is carrying out the organizing drive as part of a nationwide AFSCME campaign called "50,000 Stronger." AFSCME seeks to recruit 50,000 agency fee payers by its convention in July.

Through the campaign, the national union is encouraging its affiliates to embrace "internal organizing," which aims to sign up fee payers as members, improve the training of activists and encourage more members to participate in union activities.

In May, as part of the "50,000 Stronger" program, the union trained 70 DC 37 members to be "volunteer member organizers."

The VMOs have spent weeks urging coworkers who are fee payers to sign the union's green membership cards. But while the immediate task of VMOs is signing up new members, their long-term goal is to serve as union emissaries - ambassadors of sorts - who educate coworkers about the value of unionism.

AFSCME has embarked on the recruitment drive partly as a response to the intensifying right-wing attack on the labor movement.

Arguably, organized labor stands alone as the last major U.S. institution in the country with the financial and political muscle to protect working people, whose wages have stagnated and fallen over the past four decades as business and the wealthy 1 percent have wielded greater political and economic power and amassed a greater portion of the nation's income.

The latest major assault on public-employee unions is Harris v. Quinn, a case the U.S. Supreme Court was expected to decide in late June, as PEP went to press.

Financial threat to unions

The lead plaintiff, Pamela Harris, who cares for her disabled son in Illinois as a Medicaid-funded home-care provider, works for a unit that opposed unionization. Compensation of the 4,500 providers in Illinois increased dramatically after the workers became union members.

In the lawsuit, the conservative Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation wants to convince the court to throw out the "fair share" rule that requires non-members to pay union fees. In the worst-case scenario, public-employee unions will be financially crippled.

"Lawsuits are only part of the arsenal that anti-union interests are using to try to kill us off," said DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido. "Unfortunately, we are living in a political environment where we can expect these relentless attacks to continue. This reality is a wake-up call to us. Our participation in the ‘50,000 Stronger' campaign is part of an overall strategy to strengthen the union and fight back."

Beating expectations

In the "50,000 Stronger" campaign, AFSCME wants to sign up 30 percent of its agency-fee payers. With 26,000 fee payers before launching its effort,
DC 37 set its target as 40 percent, or 10,400 fee payers. So, far the union has signed up 11,000 new members and expects to have 15,000 signed up in time for the AFSCME convention, Garrido said.

The union has taken a number of steps to organize the workers.

"Our union reps are asking people to sign green cards at union meetings, and the leaders of our locals are doing a good job in convincing the workers they represent to join," said José Sierra, director of DC 37's Blue Collar Division.

Barbara Ingram-Edmonds, who is in charge of the union's field operations, is setting up worksite meetings to bring members up to date on union business and benefits. At the meetings, staffers and local leaders encourage fee payers to become members.

In addition, many staffers are taking it upon themselves to carry green cards as they visit worksites. For instance, Lisa Riccio, an assistant director of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept., recently collected 25 cards from Grand Central Partnership workers, who last year voted to be represented by DC 37.

The union faithful - retirees - have been volunteering to do phone banking.

"The retirees are very good organizers because they are longtime activists," Garrido said. "With so much personal history, they are very effective in conveying how much it means be in a union."

As the union examined its membership records during the campaign, it discovered members were falling through the cracks and that some agency human resource departments were allowing union membership to lapse when workers received promotions or returned from leaves of absence. As many as 6,300 members have been "lost" because of such bureaucratic snafus, according to Garrido, who said the union is now working with agencies to restore many of those workers to membership.

"As an established union, we haven't put as much emphasis on organizing as we should have," Garrido said. "This campaign has shown how important it is for
DC 37 to publicize our successes. We want to do our best to communicate effectively about the value of unionism and encourage members to get more involved."

50,000 Stronger campaign
National Target:	30%
DC 37 Target:	40%
DC 37 Results
June:	42%
(July) Projected:	58%
DC 37 growing membership (2014)
Fee Payers (January):	26,000
New Members (June):	11,000
Projected New Members (July):	15,000
Projected Remaining Fee Payers (July):	11,000
Source: DC 37 Executive Office