Fighting for the rights of one of society’s most vulnerable populations is not just a job for Gwendolyn McDonald Brunson. It is a vocation that’s the result of thoughtful contemplation about what she wanted to do with her life—and personal experience.

Brunson is a staff attorney with Connecticut’s Office of Protection and Advocacy for Persons with Disabilities (P&A) in Hartford. The 38-year-old foster mother is one of five staff attorneys working for the independent state agency’s Case Services Unit.

More than 9,500 individuals, family members or interested parties contacted P&A for assistance in fiscal year 2006, according to the agency’s 2006 annual report, the most recent report available.

Advocates and attorneys like Brunson provided representation to almost 600 individuals with disabilities. There are fewer than five dozen employees staffing the agency.

Brunson’s work matters. Discrimination, neglect, abuse. These three words can sum up the offenses, but they don’t tell the story. The issues are as diverse as the population. Disabilities range from the obvious, to impairments the uninformed may not realize are bona fide disabilities, like respiratory disorders, to unpredictable conditions like Brunson’s own disability—multiple sclerosis (MS).

“My disability isn’t always noticeable,” says Brunson, who has been living with MS for 15 years. “There have been times that I’ve been in a wheelchair.”

Brunson, a member of the Administrative and Residual Employees Union (A&R), went to work for the state 13 years ago because she wanted to work on human rights issues.

After three years at the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, which is the state equivalent of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Brunson narrowed her focus to “people issues” and went to work for P&A.

The public value of the agency’s work is as understated as the general public’s awareness and sensitivity to the issues facing people with disabilities; and it is evidenced by the lack of media coverage.

Newsmaker cases include the agency’s class action lawsuit on behalf of the state’s deaf and hearing-impaired population, a reported 200,000 in 1998 when the suit was in the news.

Specifically, the agency sued nearly one dozen hospitals for failing to accommodate the deaf and hearing impaired. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement agreement under which some 32 acute care hospitals would provide sign language interpreters 24 hours a day, among other communications improvements. It’s noteworthy that federal law has required sign language interpreters in hospitals since the early 1970s.

More recently, P&A has made the news for its work on behalf of the families of prisoners with histories of mental illness who committed suicide while they were incarcerated; and its work to gain access to a nonresidential school for emotionally disturbed children to investigate whether there were appropriate academic and mental health supports for the children as well as to investigate the school’s restraint and seclusion practices.

How can you honor ‘Work that Matters’?

“My work matters because it makes a real difference in human lives,” says Brunson, a member of A&R’s executive board, who was among the 460 AFT members gathered in Las Vegas in June for the 2007 joint conference of AFT’s public employee and healthcare divisions.

The conference theme was “Work that Matters”; but the meeting was more than a celebration of the work AFT members do every day.

The conference was about strengthening the institutions in which AFT members work for the betterment of our communities.

“Whether we are providing patient care or social services, whether we are protecting air and water quality or auditing tax records or helping with public safety and health, our members provide thousands of services every day to help strengthen our communities and build our nation,” said Bruce Ludwig, chair of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. “This is truly work that matters.”

A recurring message to the record crowd was that increasing member activism and ongoing political and legislative activism are paramount to strengthening the institutions in which AFT members work.

Discerning public opinions about government and public services

The “dangerous demise,” the 30-year decline in the public’s faith and trust in government, has been advanced, in part, by the anti-tax, limited-government movement, according to Patrick Bresette, associate program director of the Demos Center for the Public Sector, and reinforced by news coverage of local, state and federal government stumbles.

Bresette, who spoke at a preconference workshop about the center’s multistage initiative to renew the public’s understanding and value of government, said that to gain support for public services, “we have to understand the stories that are shaping public opinion.”

The center’s research has found that many Americans think of “government” as the politicians; and Americans lack a concrete understanding of the role of government—the public services, programs and regulations.

“People get most of their understanding of public policy issues from the media, and the media mainly do stories on fraud, waste, abuse and corruption,” he said.

The media also cover what elected officials say; and as many members of AFT Public Employees know, too many have run for office on platforms to privatize, downsize or eliminate public services.

That’s why it is every member’s responsibility to share their stories with their elected officials whether you voted for the person or not.

After all, it’s the people we elect to public office who have the ultimate say over funding for our jobs. And if the folks we are electing to public office devalue the work we do, we should expect the public to do the same.

A survey conducted earlier this year by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press offers valuable insight—and motivation.

• Most Americans agree (62 percent to 34 percent) that “when something is run by the government, it is usually inefficient and wasteful. This is the highest level of cynicism in a decade. By an identical margin, a majority of Americans do not believe that most elected officials care what people like me think.’’
• “A 52 percent majority say government is not run for the benefit of all the people, while 45 percent say it is.”
• “About two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) say they would rather have a smaller government providing fewer services; most Democrats (60 percent) would prefer a bigger government providing more services. Independents are more divided on this—48 percent say they prefer a smaller government while 40 percent would rather have a bigger government.”
• “Roughly seven in 10 believe the government has a responsibility to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.”

Trade union principles

Increasing the number of workers nationwide who are represented by unions is important to the job security and economic well-being of AFT members, too.

A chorus of speakers, including AFT president Edward J. McElroy, AFT vice presidents Candice Owley and David Hecker, and Ludwig, urged the crowd to think and act both locally and globally on behalf of the trade union movement and workers’ rights.

One of those principles—universal healthcare—played a prominent role at the conference.

In addition to a plenary session featuring doctors Ole Thienhaus of the University of Nevada School of Medicine and Quentin Young of Physicians for a National Health Program, conference participants and their guests watched Michael Moore’s new film “Sicko.”

“Healthcare everywhere else in the world is a public service, not a commodity,” said Owley, chair of the AFT Healthcare program and policy council, noting that “this is a time for all of us to look for the way to make this come true for everybody.”

“No system that allows corporate competition for insurance dollars will work, because the incentives of insurers are at odds with the concept of a social good such as the right to access healthcare,” said Thienhaus.

The PEW survey, which was conducted between December 2006 and January 2007 and released in late March, found that “Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S. government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes.”

Specifically, 66 percent of the public, including 57 percent of those who said they would prefer smaller government, favor government-funded health insurance for all citizens.

Work that matters deserves benefits that matter

“In every difficult negotiation in this country, whether it’s the public sector or private sector, we’ve been holding on by our fingertips to keep what we’ve gained in terms of healthcare coverage and pension benefits,” said McElroy. Why? “Because many of the people who used to have these benefits don’t have them anymore.

“If no one else has healthcare and decent pensions, we’re not going to have them. We have to fight to expand the number of people who have the benefits that we do.”

President McElroy connected the political and legislative attacks on workers’ rights, job security, healthcare benefits and retirement security to the overall decline nationwide in unionized workers.

While expanding the ranks of unionized workers is essential for the well-being of the middle and working classes, so is electing candidates to public office who “support the values, principles and ideals that we have as trade union members,” McElroy said.

As the union looks ahead to the November 2008 elections as an opportunity to elect candidates to public office—at all levels of government—who support the work and livelihood of AFT members, McElroy set the standard by which candidates should be evaluated:

“I don’t care what political party somebody is from as long as they support the values, principles and ideals that we have as public employees and trade union members. There is not a single candidate who should get our support because they are part of a political party. They should earn it.”