Members launch campaign focused on Medicaid, Medicare

Building the AFT’s comprehensive organizing campaigns was a major theme of the AFT Healthcare organizers’ conference held in New York City in March. More than 45 organizers, lead organizers and AFT staff attended the three-day meeting.

Only a bit of healthcare organizing occurs in units larger than 500 workers, said Gary Stevenson, director of organization for AFT Healthcare. Outlining the largest organizing wins in registered nurse units in the past eight years, Stevenson pointed out that big wins are still possible even in a virulently anti-union environment.

"It all comes down to solid organizing," Stevenson said. "We’re building a movement, not just a union."

Comprehensive campaigns will become the norm for healthcare organizing, added Jeff Fielder, president of the Food and Allied Service Trades (FAST), a constitutional department of the AFL-CIO. Commonly mislabeled "strategic campaigns" or "community campaigns," comprehensive campaigns are built on the results of extensive research into the employer’s weaknesses and a determination to exploit them ruthlessly, Fielder told the group.

Organizers spent a large part of the training working on two exercises in strategic thinking and targeting. Using case studies containing hundreds of pages of research and documentation, the organizers created strategies to take on a large corporation when the union has little power, and to target facilities when there are no obvious "hot shops."

Attendees also heard from AFT staffers on rulings due out soon from the National Labor Relations Board, as well as on public relations, media campaigns and message development during organizing drives.

The next AFT Healthcare organizers’ conference is slotted for June 14-17 in Washington, D.C.; it will focus on research tools and methods used in comprehensive campaigns.