Hundreds of Workers Join AFSCME, IAM and CWA

by Mike Hall, May 5, 2009

New Mexico child care providers lobbied at the state Capitol earlier this year for legislation that will allow them to form a union with AFSCME.

Flight service specialists, health care employees and aluminum mill workers are among the latest workers to win a voice at work and a union card with AFL-CIO unions. Meanwhile in New Mexico, child care workers have just won the right to join unions and bargain for better lives.

More than 800 Automated Flight Service Specialists at Lockheed Martin voted to join the Machinists (IAM). The Flight Service Specialists work at 12 sites and three hub facilities across the continental United States and Hawaii. 

Their duties include pre-flight, in-flight, operational and special services, en route communications, search and rescue and pre- and in-flight meteorological and aeronautical briefings. Says IAM Vice President Rich Michalski: 

This is a great victory for them and a strong signal that in these tough economic times, workers want the benefits of union representation—job security, a secure retirement and the pay and benefits that support a healthy middle class.

Also, 60 production and maintenance workers at the Aluminum Rolling Mill of Koenig & Vits in Manitowoc, Wis., and 17 mechanics who maintain school buses for First Student in Naperville, Yorkville and Grand Ridge, Ill., voted to join IAM.

Meanwhile, following several successful elections and majority sign-up wins around the country, more than 1,200 workers are the newest members of the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Under majority sign-up, an employer agrees to recognize the workers’ choice to join a union when a majority of the workers signs union authorization cards. It’s a key part of the Employee Free Choice Act and eliminates the employer intimidation and harassment many workers face when trying to form unions. One of the recent wins shows just how far an employer will go to deny even a small group of workers union representation.

Last week, 13 technicians at Verizon Business’s international group in New York City voted overwhelmingly—by a 10–3 margin—for representation with CWA Local 1101. But organizers say the workers had to withstand a management campaign that included scare letters, captive audience meetings (five within three weeks) and even a last-minute meeting with the company’s executive vice president.

Also joining CWA in New York are 303 service employees at St. Joseph Hospital near Buffalo who voted for CWA Local 1168. A unit of 63 licensed practical nurses and medical technicians at the Faxton campus of the Faxton-St. Luke’s Health Center, in Utica, N.Y., voted for CWA Local 1126.

In addition, hundreds of workers in several states signed up with CWA: 

• In New York City, CWA Local 1180 was recently certified as the bargaining representative for more than 400 administrative managers who work for agencies through the city government.
• More than 300 medical interpreters and clinical research coordinators at the University of California medical centers have joined the Union of Professional and Technical Employees-CWA Local 9119.
• In Somerset, N.J., 160 school bus drivers for the county’s school system joined CWA Local 1040.
• In Youngstown, Ohio, all employees at the Print Factory joined Erie Mailers Local M128/CWA Local 14840.

In New Mexico last month, more than 3,000 home child care providers won the right to join a union to improve their lives and quality of home child care services in the state. Gov. Bill Richardson signed a bill that covers registered and licensed providers who take care of children through New Mexico’s child care assistance program. Says AFSCME Council 18 President Andrew Padilla:

When we started this campaign about three years ago, child care providers had dwindled from 4,000 to about 2,500. That means that 1,500 of them had stopped doing the job and when that happens, there is nobody to care for these children of working class families. This bill will help them gain more access to training and provide a better quality of child care.

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