AFT's new organizing model introduced

More than 25 organizers from the AFT’s healthcare division met in Boston in January to improve their training and issue-based organizing skills.

Gary Stevenson, AFT’s director of healthcare organizing, opened the weeklong training by introducing the AFT’s new organizing model.

Although healthcare organizers have, for the most part, implemented the model’s principles, they will need to become more familiar with those principles to handle challenges, Stevenson said.

Much of the training focused on how organizers can become better trainers.

“Adults learn in distinctly different ways from schoolchildren,” said Chris Runge, assistant director of the AFT’s Union Leadership Institute. For example, youth learners often depend on others for direction while adults are more self-directed, says Runge.

“Organizers need to understand how adults learn so they become better trainers for organizing committees, member-organizers and emerging leaders.”

Runge introduced the organizing staff to the four styles of adult learning and how to integrate them into presentations and training. Runge described the styles as visual, which depends on sight; auditory, which depends on sound; kinesthetic, which depends on touch; and environmental, which depends on one’s surroundings.

Runge then discussed designing a training module, which is different from presenting one. Breaking into small groups, the organizers drafted their own  modules using the “organization model” approach, then critiqued one another’s work.

The organizers brainstormed to come up with four modules every organizer should teach: active listening, storytelling, getting the message across and assigning tasks.

At the end of the session, each group turned its completed training module over to the AFT for inclusion in the training materials.

The week’s training also featured a presentation by Darryl Alexander, health and safety coordinator in the AFT’s organization and field services department, who provided information sources organizers can tap to learn about an employer’s health and safety record. The organizers discussed how health and safety data can be integrated into an organizing campaign.

The next AFT healthcare organizers conference is scheduled for this October.