AFSCME Launches New Political, Health Care, Organizing Initiative

by Mike Hall, Aug 10, 2006

Faced with what AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says is “a newfound audacity from anti-union business leaders and the politicians they bankroll who have become shameless in their attacks on working people,” delegates to the public employee union’s convention yesterday approved a sweeping plan to fight back.

The 3,500 AFSCME delegates at the 1.4 million-member union’s Chicago convention overwhelming said “yes” to a new political action and organizing plan called the 21st Century Initiative.

Key elements of the initiative include:

• Creating a 40,000-member army of volunteers to register 90 percent of AFSCME members to vote and turn out on Election Day and signing up 25 percent of the union’s members to each give $100 or more annually to the union’s PEOPLE political action committee.
• Launching a new national legislative campaign to comprehensively reform the U.S. health care system and make affordable care universal.
• Funding new organizing drives to help more working people join the union and in turn increase power at the bargaining table, at the ballot box and in the corridors of government. The plan commits AFSCME organizers to win representation rights for 70,000 new workers per year.
• Opening a Leadership Institute to train union leaders and activists at every level. The institute will show AFSCME members how to use field skills and online tools to fight for fair contracts, elect pro-worker politicians and beat back efforts to privatize public jobs.

Says McEntee:

In the last six years…our wages are stagnant. Our jobs are being privatized. Our health costs are ballooning. Our pensions are disappearing. Our contracts are getting tougher to negotiate. Our middle class is shrinking. Even our basic rights to join a union and bargain collectively are now being taken away.

AFSCME members took an enormous step in fighting back against the forces aligned against working people. The 21st Century Initiative is how our union will become stronger and hold politicians accountable for this unmitigated assault on our economic security and basic workplace rights.

Delegates also approved a $3 a month increase in dues—to be phased in over three years—to create a $60 million war chest for the new organizing, political and legislative campaign.

Today at the convention, the 3,500 delegates, along with another 2,500 AFSCME activists attending the convention, are taking part in a unique town meeting that uses technology to enhance democracy.

Willie Wallace, a city employee from Gary, Ind., and member of AFSCME Local 3491, wrote on AFSCME’s Green Line blog this morning that he has been looking forward to the meeting, “where we’ll put the 21st Century Initiative into action.”

We’re going to do something really cool here in Chicago. As individuals and in small groups we will offer up our opinions and ideas on working in the public sector in this country and on being members of this union.…Our answers and ideas will be put up on giant screens in the convention hall, and we’ll vote as individuals on which ideas we think are best.

Along with setting a new course for the union, delegates heard from a number of speakers, including U.S. Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who told AFSCME activists they and the entire union movement will play a crucial role in this fall’s elections.

Clinton said the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress have pursued a “reckless agenda,” including cutting health care, trying to privatize Social Security and refusing to the raise the minimum wage, while giving billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest and Big Business.

We have to change the direction of this country starting in November.…Now more than ever we need to show up and vote to take our country back.

Obama urged the delegates to keep fighting for justice and change.

As long as there are those who struggle to raise a family on low wages and no benefits, I ask you to march for opportunity. As long as there are those who can’t organize or unionize or bargain for a better life, I ask you to keep on marching for solidarity….When you’ve got a Republican Congress that says no to organizing rights, that says no to overtime pay, that says no to a higher minimum wage, no to Social Security, no to Medicaid, it’s time to say no to that Congress.

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