New Commitment to Organizing Drives ATU

by James Parks, Apr 29, 2007

Employees at the Bend (Ore.) Area Transit system voted to join ATU Local 757 in January.

Just four months ago, Charles Lester, the first-ever organizing director for the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), vowed to put the model for organizing presented at the 2006 AFL-CIO Organizing Summit to work in his union. Now that model has paid off for 400 transit drivers and office employees in three cities who now will be able to bargain for better wages. Hundreds more drivers are voting in the next few weeks on whether to better their lives by joining a union.

What makes these victories especially important, Lester says, is that this is the first experience many of the locals involved have had with successfully helping workers join a union.

The local members are the backbone of our success. These victories are all member driven. Local members come out and learn new techniques and then they take that and go out to organize. We are building power from within.

The latest victory came after a five-month effort by drivers for First Transit in Denver, who voted 156 to seven to join ATU. The vote at First Transit represents a crucial step in the organizing efforts for the drivers in the area, Lester says. Buoyed by their success at First Transit, the members of the local are working to help workers at other transit companies, such as Laidlaw and Veolia to join a union.

On the West Coast, drivers in Portland, Ore., joined Local 757. The new members include all city employees, even the police chief and city clerk. To build on this and an earlier victory this year, Local 757 President John Hunt is joining with the ATU organizing department and ATU Vice President Ron Heitzman to train 50 stewards and activists on the best ways to help workers gain better wages and benefits by joining a union.

This is the second time workers have chosen to join Local 757 in three months. In January, 40 drivers, dispatchers, call-takers and customer service representatives working for the Bend Area Transit system voted for ATU.  Local 757 joined with the Central Oregon Labor Council and “Jobs with  Justice” to assist the workers.

Lester says joining with local allies such as other unions, community, religious, and elected leaders is an integral part of ATU’s new organizing model. The workers also identify key leaders to form a strong worker organizing committee and make sure the organizers reflect the diversity of the workers.

Other recent ATU wins include:

• Some 110 drivers at MV Transit in West Palm Beach, Fla. gained a real voice on the job after the company agreed to voluntarily recognize ATU Local 1577. This is the first organizing campaign in the local’s history.
• In Charleston, S.C., office workers for Veolia unanimously voted for Local 610. They join the other company employees who are already ATU members.
• In Gaithersburg, Md., outside Washington, D.C., more than 70 percent of the 105 paratransit drivers at Challenger Transportation have signed up with ATU.

Workers in several other cities are just weeks from making their choice to join ATU, Lester says. He also singled out other locals that are organizing for the first time in Albany, N.Y., Spokane, Wash., Minneapolis, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Lester credits the AFL-CIO and our Organizing Department for staff’s work in training and assisting workers to form unions. He also says the key to their success is the commitment by ATU President Warren George and the union leadership to a new way of organizing.

ATU didn’t have an organizing director or an organizing department until Nov. 1 (2006), when I came on board. When I interviewed for the job, they told me that the union had won elections in spite of themselves. They had three international reps who handled trusteeships, arbitrations and organizing. Organizing fell mostly to the local presidents, 95 percent of whom are full-time workers.

Our leadership is really showing that you can change a union. It may be changing little by little, but this is only the beginning.

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