Public Employee Press


DC 37/AFSCME Strong: Engage & Educate
Members spring into action

BY ALFREDO ALVARADO

District Council 37's Organizing Dept. recently dispatched its organizers to college campuses all over Brooklyn, from the downtown campus of the New York City College of Technology to Kingsborough Community College at Manhattan Beach.

In June, organizers also set up meetings at the College of Staten Island to recruit for Member Action Teams, volunteers who share the union's message with their coworkers.

Local 384 member Michelle Karapeles, an Administrative Assistant at the College of Staten Island, one of the 11 senior colleges of the City University of New York, is one of dozens of CUNY workers who have become more active by joining the union's Member Action Teams.

For Karapeles, helping to spread the union message is a family tradition. She grew up in a household of DC 37 members. "They went to the marches, the meetings and Labor Day parades, wearing their union T-shirts," recalled Karapeles, who has worked on the 204-acre campus for 22 years.

Karapeles noticed union organizers have been showing up on campus more frequently the last couple of months and decided to become active with the MAT. Her first assignment was organizing her coworkers to attend the big rally in March to demand full funding at CUNY and a new contract for its workers.

"We filled a bus with 55 members," she said, of the rally in front of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Manhattan office.

The size of the campus and the many members from several locals make communicating and getting to know colleagues a challenge for the MAT activists.

"The Member Action Teams help because I get to meet more people, and as long as I've been here there are still parts of the school I'm not familiar with," said Karapeles, who works at the campus counseling center.

Like her colleagues at Bronx Community College and Brooklyn College, she's seen the campus and student populations grow but hasn't seen management hire more maintenance, custodial, clerical, or administrative staff. Exposing the need for better services on campus is one of the many issues the Member Action Teams plan to address.