Workers Join AFSCME and Machinists in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania

by Mike Hall, Jul 24, 2006

Municipal employees in Oklahoma and Rhode Island and defense and aerospace workers in Pennsylvania and Mississippi recognized the power and protection a union can provide and recently won a voice at work with AFSCME and the Machinists (IAM). (Check below to find out why people want to join unions.)

Following a two-year legal battle, some 280 city employees in Enid, Okla., became the first group of workers to win their union voice under a new state law allowing municipal workers in cities of more than 35,000 residents to join unions.

In 2004, Enid workers submitted their signed authorization cards to the state’s Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) to join AFSCME, a 1.4 million-member union that represents public employees. Until 2003, public employees had been prohibited by Oklahoma law from forming unions.

After the workers sought to form a union, city attorneys went to court to block the workers’ right to join a union.

In 2005, the state supreme court ruled the population requirement made the law allowing workers to form unions unconstitutional. But in a rare rehearing, the court reversed itself. This month, the PERB certified the Enid workers’ win.

Union organizers in Oklahoma say the victory in Enid is having a ripple effect throughout the state, where some 9,000 city workers are eligible to join a union under the bargaining law. About 200 workers rallied this month in Muskogee, and about 100 employees of the city of Moore have submitted their authorization cards to the PERB for recognition.

To read more about the Enid victory, click here.

Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, 45 employees of the town of New Shoreham recently voted to join AFSCME Council 94. They work in such departments as harbor master, public works and police dispatch.

The Machinists union, which represents nearly 720,000 active and retired members in the U.S. and Canada, reports a trio of worker wins:

* In Tobyhanna, Pa., some 330 workers at Defense by Defense Support Services LLC voted to join IAM District Lodge 1. The workers maintain weapon systems for the Department of Defense.

* The 121 employees of Jacobs Sverdrup who work at the Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., cast their votes for IAM District 73.

* At Auto Truck Transport in Cleveland, 10 clerical workers voted to join IAM.

Why do workers want to join unions? Because there is a big Union Difference:

• On average, union workers’ wages are 29 percent higher than those of their nonunion counterparts.
• Only 16 percent of nonunion workers have guaranteed pensions; fully 73 percent of union workers do.
• More than nine out of 10 union workers have jobs that provide health insurance benefits, but fewer than seven out of 10 nonunion workers do.
• Unions help employers create a more stable, productive workforce—where workers have a say in improving their jobs.

Click here to find out more about the union difference and here for a quick course in Union 101.

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