“If there was anything I could change about the state, that would be the first thing,” he says. Adopted in 1958, the amendment gives unionized workers the right to enjoy the benefits of union representation—without paying union dues or representation fees—if they don’t want to join the union.

“I spent 25 years trying to get back to a union,” says Diediker, who joined the Kansas Association of Public Employees nearly five years ago—as soon as he started working for the city of Topeka as a planner in the Planning Department. “I’ve been a union man for years. I just didn’t have the pleasure of being a [union] member.”

Diediker isn’t just a union member, though. He’s a union activist who believes “you only get out of the union what you put in.” A year ago, he was elected vice president of his KAPE chapter, the largest union Topeka has. And one thing he wants to accomplish is increasing membership.

“No [workforce] gets unionized that doesn’t deserve it,” says Diediker. “I feel that the only way one can effect change is to be in a group of like-minded individuals, standing shoulder-to-shoulder to get some things accomplished.

“I don’t know that every union can be everything to everyone,” he says. “But there are major issues that directly affect working [people] that unions promote. Citizens aren’t looking for a handout. They would like a hand up, and I think that is what the union is here for.”