AFT AND SPECIAL OLYMPICS: A WINNING TEAM

Nancy Logan can tell plenty of stories about people who got hooked after their first experience volunteering with the Special Olympics. “A lot of people come by to help out for an hour, and they end up staying for 10 years,” jokes Logan, a teacher and special education department chair at Nanuet (N.Y.) High School. Logan should know—the AFT member started volunteering with the program when she was in high school.

The AFT is hoping to get more members to follow Logan’s example. As part of a new partnership with the Special Olympics, the national union recently signed on to help sponsor the first USA National Games in Ames, Iowa, in July. At the games, the AFT will provide transportation for athletes, coaches, volunteers and family members as they move from their dorms and hotels to the Festival Village and event locations.

The aim of the Special Olympics is to empower individuals with intellectual disabilities to become physically fit and productive through sports training and competition. It offers children and adults year-round training and competition in 26 Olympic-type sports.

Over the years, Logan has been involved with the program at every level—from local competitions to the World Games—as a coach, official, coordinator and any other job that needed to be filled. As a special ed teacher, Logan says, she doesn’t always see big gains with her students in the classroom. School is often hard for them, so they get frustrated and angry. Outside of school, “they exhibit skills we never see in the classroom,” she says, noting that they are more confident and outgoing.

Regular education students also have a great experience when they volunteer with the Special Olympics, she says.

“The students in the high school see the athletes in a different way,” Logan explains. “Many of them come back very impressed. It really is an eye-opener for them.” And the same enthusiasm holds true with other school staff: “I haven’t had anyone yet say it was a waste of time to volunteer.”

MCELROY ISSUES CALL TO ACTION OVER ATTACKS ON LABOR, PENSIONS

The increasingly prevalent attacks on the labor movement, the institutions where our members work, and hard-won benefits should anger and energize AFT leaders and members to fight back, says AFT president Edward J. McElroy.

“We’re living in a very different time” when public services and the individuals who deliver them have become fair game for an all-out assault by some elected leaders and others, McElroy told the May 30 general session of the union’s five program and policy councils meeting in Washington, D.C.

These attacks are “very different [from what we’ve experienced in the past], so our response has to be different,” he said.

Despite nationwide concern about a shrinking middle class and the growing income gap, the very institutions that helped build the middle class—public schools and unions—are now the targets of many of the attacks, he pointed out. “The shrinking middle class parallels the decline of the labor movement.”

McElroy’s sharpest criticism was aimed at those companies that are reneging—with apparent impunity—on the pensions they promised their employees. These companies, he asserted, are “stealing money” from workers who, in most cases, agreed over the years to forgo part of their salary increases to bolster their pensions or maintain their healthcare plans.

Public sector employees and their unions haven’t reacted strongly or angrily enough to the attacks on private sector pensions, McElroy said. “They’re coming after your pensions next,” he warned.

An informed and activated membership is the best defense, said McElroy, who urged the AFT leaders to talk directly to their members about these threats and to get them involved in grass-roots activities like the union’s Activists for Congressional Education (ACE) program and political campaigns aimed at electing worker-friendly candidates.

AFT-MARYLAND SCORES LEGISLATIVE VICTORIES FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES

AFT-Maryland is celebrating significant legislative victories that deliver improved pensions and collective bargaining enhancements to many of the union’s 14,000 members. On April 25, Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. signed into law the State Employees’ and Teachers’ Retirement Enhancement Benefit Act of 2006. The law boosts pension benefits to 54 percent from 42 percent of salary after 30 years of service.

AFT-Maryland lobbyist Pamela Burger says the union’s effort to improve the retirement plans was assisted by hard data. Maryland’s public employees were receiving one of the nation’s lowest pension benefits, which Burger says was “hard [for lawmakers] to justify when Maryland is among the wealthiest states” in the nation.

Earlier in the month, the Legislature, overriding Ehrlich’s veto, strengthened the collective bargaining law for state employees. In addition to requiring the Department of Budget and Management to provide unions with the names and addresses of the state employees they represent, which is central to a union’s ability to organize and mobilize its membership, the measure makes the State Labor Relations Board an independent unit of state government.

Burger says unions representing public employees in the state joined forces to get the measures approved. “Our efforts really were collaborative,” she says. “We started [lobbying] in September. We had a plan. We worked the plan.”