Special Interest Groups

• WHAT IS ITS MISSION?
• HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?
• PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
• PROGRAMS
• BUDGET INFORMATION
• HISTORY
• CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES
• FUTURE DIRECTIONS
• GROUP RESOURCES
• GROUP PUBLICATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY

ESTABLISHED: September 1936
EMPLOYEES: 423
MEMBERS: 1,300,000
PAC: Public Employees Organizing to Promote Legislative Equality (PEOPLE)

Contact Information:
ADDRESS: 1625 L St. NW Washington, DC 20036
PHONE: (202) 429-1000
TDD (HEARING IMPAIRED): (202) 659-0446
FAX: (202) 429-1293
E-MAIL: organize!@afscme.org
URL: http://www.afscme.org
INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT: Gerald McEntee

WHAT IS ITS MISSION?

The preamble to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employee (AFSCME) constitution observes that "for unions, the work place and the polling place are inseparable, and the exercise of the awesome rights and responsibilities of citizenship is equally required in both." AFSCME thus has two major goals: organizing public employees into the union and using collective bargaining to secure them better wages, improved working conditions, and participation in decision making in the workplace; and promoting legislation that benefits both union members and the public.

HOW IS IT STRUCTURED?

AFSCME is composed of roughly 3,400 local unions, most of which are affiliated with one of 63 regional councils. The international headquarters, located in Washington, D.C., works on issues concerning large segments of the membership and assists and coordinates activities of the councils and locals. The international office has eleven departments dealing with politics, legislation, and public policy; training, organizing, and field services; specialized areas such as women's rights; and the Public Employees Organizing to Promote Legislative Equality (PEOPLE) Department which runs AFSCME's political action committee (PAC). The councils further the goals of the international organization by coordinating on a regional basis the activities of the locals in such areas as research, organizing, education, and political action.

AFSCME is one of the more democratic unions. The international office is governed by the international executive board composed of the president, secretary-treasurer, and 31 vice presidents. Officers are elected for four-year terms by local and council delegates to the biennial international convention. The convention sets the organization's priorities and adopts policies and programs. The international office also has a nine-member judicial panel which arbitrates internal union affairs. Locals elect their own officials and have a great deal of autonomy in their local affairs such as collective bargaining.

Members can be employees of state, county or municipal governments, hospitals, schools, universities, and nonprofit agencies in the United States, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Over 325,000 members are employed in the health care industry. Another 325,000 members are clerical and secretarial employees, and about 100,000 members are corrections officers.

AFSCME is affiliated with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Public Services International (PSI), a worldwide organization of public employees.

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS

To further its public policy goals, AFSCME actively lobbies and campaigns on behalf of its membership. The international office employs several full time lobbyists who advocate the union's positions. They inform elected officials on how policies would affect AFSCME's membership through regular meetings and by testifying at congressional hearings. The international office's computerized telephone operation is capable of placing several thousand calls to members in a single evening encouraging them to vote or contact their representatives on a particular issue. All levels of the union work on developing grassroots (local) lobbies, recruiting volunteers for political activities, orchestrating voter registration and "get out the vote" drives, and distributing campaign literature. The PEOPLE political action committee (PAC) raises and distributes financial contributions to candidates and the Democratic party. In the 1995–96 election cycle PEOPLE was the second largest political contributor among all PACs and private donors.

In the workplace, AFSCME staff assists locals by offering information on organizing union membership and research and collective bargaining resources. They provide training materials and programs for local leaders, sample contracts, budget analysis, and pay studies. The international office has reference materials and can provide expertise on health and safety issues relevant to AFSCME members in contract negotiations. It also helps locals develop strategies to fight privatization (to change a business from public to private control) of government jobs.

The AFSCME public affairs operation creates press releases on political and workplace issues, conducts press conferences, maintains relationships with reporters, and assists locals with public relations activities. It also produces informational, training, and organizing videos for use by the locals and councils. It disseminates reports through its research arm that bolster the union's image. For example, a report entitled "Getting It Right," which found job protection and compensation for public and private employees to be comparable, was released to counter proposals for tax and budget cuts that portrayed public payrolls as inflated.

The union also provides legal assistance to locals and councils, frequently filing lawsuits on its members' behalf to further public policy goals, such as equal pay for women. In 1997 an AFSCME local filed the first sex discrimination lawsuit against Congress over equal pay. AFSCME argued that the Capitol's female custodial staff is paid thousands of dollars less a year than the male laborer crew for similar work.

PROGRAMS

AFSCME participated with other unions in the Labor '96 program, which was designed to educate union members on the politics and voting records of political candidates and to call politicians' attention to issues concerning workers. There was a massive contribution of money, staff, and materials dedicated to political education in preparation for the 1996 elections. At the local level activists talked with fellow members and wrote letters to the editors of their local newspapers on political issues that would affect AFSCME members. Local union leaders arranged for television and radio spots produced by the AFL-CIO on issues such as Medicare to air on local stations. Fearing defeat in the 1996 elections, some Republicans broke from conservative ranks to help pass a minimum wage increase and new regulations on the health insurance industry. Four million more union households voted in 1996 than in 1992 while nationwide turnout decreased. Moreover union households voted overwhelmingly for Democratic congressional candidates. The program fell short of its goal of displacing the Republican majority in Congress but it did narrow the margin and thus the likelihood that there would be significant reductions in workplace protections or welfare state programs would be passed.

AFSCME encourages locals to develop "contract campaigns" designed to build community support and strengthen the union's position in collective bargaining. In this program members are encouraged to contact other workers one-on-one or in small groups to identify issues outside of wages, benefits, and working conditions that will impact the public at large. Thus if a union hopes to fight hospital privatization and the loss of union jobs it may choose to emphasize that such action would be a threat to the quality of patient care. Committees are then established to oversee negotiations with the employer, communications with the membership, and communications with the media and the public. These committees also organize rallies and demonstrations as well as letter writing campaigns and public service announcements.

Through the AFSCME Advantage programs, the union offers its members and their families benefits such as low cost mortgage and real estate programs, life insurance, legal assistance, travel club memberships, and low interest credit. The union also administers a scholarship program.

BUDGET INFORMATION

Not made available.

HISTORY

A small group of Wisconsin employees gathered in Madison in 1932 to form an organization that would soon become the Wisconsin State Employees Association. The organization was founded by workers who feared that with the Great Depression state politicians might abandon Wisconsin's famed competitive civil service system in favor of distributing government jobs as political patronage to friends and supporters. The union became affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and with the federation's help, defeated the legislative effort that was underway to dismantle the civil service system.

One of the earliest leaders of the Wisconsin organization, Arnold Zander, hoped to establish a national union of state employees. When the AFL granted national jurisdiction over state, county, and municipal government employees in 1935 to the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union dominated by federal government workers, Zander quickly convinced its leaders to allow him to form a relatively autonomous union within the AFGE that was to become the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Intense disputes over the degree of AFSCME's independence from AFGE were resolved when the AFL granted a separate charter to AFSCME allowing it to became an independent international union in 1936. Membership grew rapidly—surpassing fifty thousand members by the end of World War II (1939–45). During this period the primary focus of the union was to lobby for civil service laws that secured the merit system (competitive award of state and local government jobs).

By the 1950s AFSCME's political strategy was shifting. Many states had laws that forbid collective bargaining contracts between public sector workers and their government employers or outlawed strikes by government employees. An insurgency within AFSCME, led by New York labor leader Jerry Wurf, encouraged the international leadership to place greater emphasis on securing laws recognizing the rights of public workers to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. Several political events built up momentum for public sector unionization. In 1958 New York City Mayor Robert Wagner, under pressure from AFSCME, recognized public employees' rights to collective bargaining. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order recognizing the rights of federal employees to collective bargaining, contributing to a more favorable climate for the unionization of all public employees.

In 1964 Wurf was elected international president of AFSCME. He stressed aggressive organizing and bargaining as well as reform of the union and the implementation of more democratic procedures. In 1965 AFSCME became the first U.S. union to adopt a bill of rights for its members. By 1966 several states enacted laws favorable to public employee legislation and AFSCME's membership grew to over 250,000.

In the 1960s and 1970s the demand for the employee's right to organize became linked to the demand for other rights and liberal causes. AFSCME developed an alliance with the Civil Rights movement at the national, state, and local levels. In 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated while visiting Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking AFSCME sanitation workers in their demand for union recognition and an end to discriminatory employment practices. AFSCME also joined traditionally liberal unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) in opposition to the Vietnam War. AFSCME, along with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), led the movement among unions for equal pay for women.

By 1975 the union had over 680,000 members and wielded considerable political influence. While most unions in the private sector were maintaining or declining in membership, public employee unions continued to grow. During the 1970s the leadership of AFSCME increased the emphasis on political action. The PEOPLE political action committee was formed and AFSCME participated in elections at every level of government across the country. In 1981 AFSCME sent the largest delegation of any union to join the Solidarity Day demonstration in Washington, D.C., organized by the AFL-CIO to demonstrate labor's opposition to the policies of the newly elected Republican president Ronald Reagan.

During the 1980s AFSCME often found itself allied with its state and local government employers who opposed cutbacks in federal programs such as welfare, law enforcement assistance, and revenue sharing. Gerald McEntee was elected to head the union in 1981 following Jerry Wurf's death. Under his leadership AFSCME became the second largest union affiliated with the AFL-CIO, with over 1.3 million members. McEntee strengthened the union's ties to the Democratic Party and took a leading role in the 1992 presidential nomination of Bill Clinton through an early endorsement and vigorous campaigning. Clinton and other Democrats have been criticized for failing to take on "big government" because of their close ties to public employee unions such as AFSCME.

McEntee also served as a vice-president of the AFL-CIO, where he has pushed for more aggressive political involvement on the part of the entire labor movement. When he became chair of the federation's PAC, he played a major role in determining the policy direction and political involvement of the labor movement as a whole in which AFSCME became a dominant player. AFSCME members represented one quarter of all AFL-CIO delegates to the 1996 Democratic Convention.

CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES

AFSCME advocates a range of liberal political issues such as minimum wage increases, maintenance of Medicare and Medicaid, and greater worker protections through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). AFSCME was a key member in the coalition that supported President Clinton's effort to establish universal health insurance and in the wake of the plan's failure to be enacted, AFSCME has endorsed greater regulation of the health care system in alliance with other unions and consumer advocates. AFSCME also supports policies of particular interest to its large number of women members, such as parental leave and child care initiatives. It opposes a balanced budget amendment and efforts to restructure government bureaucracies that result in the loss of public service jobs. It also opposes privatization of government services in which private businesses contract to perform the jobs of government employees.

AFSCME has also been a major opponent of efforts to reform welfare. Over AFSCME leaders' strenuous objections, President Clinton signed into law a welfare reform bill passed by the Republican Congress in 1996 that gave states considerable discretion in how they operate their welfare systems. Since passage of the bill, many states have developed or expanded "workfare" in which welfare recipients are forced to enter work programs run by private employers or to perform services typically done by government employees in exchange for their welfare checks. In order to protect unionized government jobs (many of which are targeted for workfare workers), AFSCME is trying to shape the way these programs are implemented at all levels of government.

Case Study: Workfare

Reformers argue that because workfare participants are "work experience trainees" they should not be subject to federal or state regulations such as minimum wage, worker's compensation, and workplace health and safety laws. But AFSCME and advocates for the poor argue that the welfare recipients in these programs are workers and that they deserve the full rights of employees. They further argue that workfare programs will put downward pressure on the income, benefits, and working conditions of other unskilled workers. At the federal level, AFSCME pushed the Clinton administration to rule that workfare workers are protected by federal labor law and wage requirements. The union continues to press state governments to apply their own employee protections to workfare workers.

AFSCME participates in the Jobs With Justice Campaign in alliance with other labor groups, community activists, and church leaders in an effort to call attention to changes in welfare in the wake of reform. This campaign publicizes the high level of competition for low-skill, low-wage jobs and focuses on this as the underlying cause of poverty and the need for welfare. This campaign is aimed at convincing the public that workfare programs are an attempt by employers to exploit welfare recipients by using them to perform work for wages far below the minimum wage. Participants in the campaign also criticize the programs for failing to offer participants adequate child care and future training and educational opportunities. In late 1997 the Campaign organized a National Day of Action for Welfare/Workfare Justice with 50 rallies around the country demanding that federal welfare-to-work grants be used by the states to create what they term "living wage" jobs rather than workfare programs.

AFSCME also participates in local coalitions that are active on the workfare issue. In Baltimore, Maryland, AFSCME has joined a very effective grassroots alliance of religious and community activists, Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development (BUILD). BUILD had won a "living wage" ordinance in Baltimore in which city contractors would be required to pay significantly more than the minimum wage to their employees, only to see it undercut by workfare programs. The alliance argued that if companies can get workers for free or subminimum wages why would they choose to employ unskilled workers not on welfare at full price? Observers estimated that one thousand low-wage workers were displaced by workfare participants in the first six months of 1997. AFSCME President McEntee argued that this is a cruel form of "musical chairs" in which "people who had a little something will be out and on welfare and welfare workers will be in with below minimum wages."

AFSCME and BUILD arranged protests and demonstrations designed to push Maryland's governor Parris Glendening into modifying the state's workfare program. The governor agreed to subsidize only newly created workfare jobs thus decreasing the chance that workers will be displaced. However, he refused to create significant numbers of long-term government positions to absorb workfare participants. AFSCME and BUILD continued to lobby the state legislature to create public sector jobs for welfare recipients that pay a living wage and to deny tax credits to private employers for hiring workfare workers that displace other workers. These changes are opposed by Work Not Welfare, an organization of corporate employers that have agreed to hire workfare participants and wish to maintain the current system.

AFSCME and BUILD pressured private employers such as the Johns Hopkins University that were considering workfare jobs. At Hopkins they demonstrated with student groups in early 1997 to protest university efforts to cut the hours of unionized employees so that workfare workers could be hired at $1.50 an hour.

Despite regional and local successes, AFSCME was unable to get any legislation passed on a national level to alter the ways in which workfare is administered.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

In its fight to minimize the negative effects of workfare programs on public employment and wages, AFSCME has declared its intention to organize workfare participants. In New York seven thousand workfare workers have signed cards to join a workfare workers organizing committee. The international organization encourages locals to develop or expand similar efforts. AFSCME also plans to expand its efforts at organizing child care workers—one of the lowest paying occupations in the United States.

GROUP RESOURCES

AFSCME maintains an extensive Web site at http://www.afscme.org that features information from each of its departments, news on upcoming events, updates on ongoing campaigns, and archives of press releases, reports, and publications. The site also contains the organization's constitution and various training manuals. For more information about AFSCME write to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, 1625 L St. NW, Washington, DC 20036 or contact its public affairs office at (202) 429-1130.

GROUP PUBLICATIONS

In addition to various reports on political and workplace issues AFSCME publishes three internal publications. The Public Employee covers general AFSCME news and is sent to all members seven times a year. The Leader is a weekly newsletter aimed at local and council leaders with special issues focused on political action and health and safety. The AFSCME Steward is a quarterly publication directed to union stewards, officers and staff. Recent issues of all three as well as various other newsletters and reports are available on-line at http://www.afscme.org/publications/content.htm. Locals also distribute their own newsletters. More information about AFSCME's publications can be obtained by writing to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, 1625 L St. NW, Washington, DC 20036 or calling its public affairs office at (202) 429-1130.