While President Bush raises money for his 2004 re-election campaign, the AFT is focusing on raising a more valuable commodity for the upcoming election cycle—human capital.

“The theme of this conference is ‘unify, mobilize, organize!’—and that’s more urgent than ever,” AFT president Sandra Feldman told nearly 500 participants at the AFT Public Employees and AFT Healthcare joint national conference June 5-8 in Washington, D.C. “[The Bush administration] is declaring war on government’s historic role in helping average working families.”

Economic recovery is stalling, Americans’ incomes are stagnating and tax windfalls for the wealthy are skyrocketing, she said, while governments at every level are running in the red, laying off workers and cutting back services.

In sounding the battle cry—unify, mobilize, organize—Feldman ran down the list of Bush administration initiatives that are hurting working families and threatening the livelihoods of public employees, ranging from the recent $350 billion tax giveback to schemes to downgrade or privatize basic social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to legislative and regulatory attacks on worker rights. “We’re confronting policies that will shape our nation’s future and reveal our nation’s values for years to come,” Feldman said.

“We have a choice,” said AFT secretary-treasurer Edward J. McElroy. “Stand on the sidelines and watch them kill us—or get in the fray.” The challenge, he said, is to “organize the organized” for political and legislative action.

Conference participants began laying the groundwork for that activism by participating in a lobbying blitz, visiting more than 80 congressional and senatorial offices to deliver the message that quality public services matter. During their Capitol Hill visits, members of AFT Public Employees discussed everything from the lack of funding for public services—transportation, social programs, healthcare—to how the tax cuts enacted under President Bush are exacerbating state and local budget deficits.

“This year, perhaps more than any other year, we need to be meeting in Washington, D.C.,” said AFT vice president Jim McGarvey, who chairs the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. “Every day, decisions are made here that affect each of us whether we live in Montana or Connecticut, New York City or Chicago—or any of the other states and cities represented by our union.”

The Bush administration has “a plan,” North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad told the group, to reduce the role of government at all levels.

One policy at a time, the administration is going to cut and privatize programs—including Social Security and Medicare—and the administration will use the national debt as the reason for cutting spending, Conrad said.

“They are going to come for your job,” he said. “I tell you, it is time to fight back.”
 

Building a Politically Powerful Union

Strong unions protect worker rights and interests in the workplace and in legislative arenas. But unions don’t build power from the leadership down. They build strength from the membership up.

Arlea Igoe, a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF), an affiliate of AFT Public Employees, admits that “it has only been in the past few years” that she has become politically and legislatively active through her union.

Like many union members, Igoe, a supervisor of electronic data processing for the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, has come to realize the level of influence federal and state lawmakers have over her work life. But Igoe also has come to realize the level of influence she, too, has as an active and involved union member. The Legislature, she said, “is the only place we can go to to get our issues heard and resolved.”

“Some people do not understand the power of their collective voice and collective votes,” said Paula Stadeker, president of the Illinois Federation of State Office Educators and a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council. “We need to use both.”

Stadeker, who met with several Illinois lawmakers during the conference’s Lobby Day, said that one of the first things U.S. Rep. Lane Evans pointed out to her is that “lawmakers are waiting to hear from their constituents.”

“Every day it seems like there is another attack on the common working man,” said William Glover, president of the Kansas Association of Public Employees’ chapter at Kansas State University. “Getting more involved in politics is the only way we are going to influence [policymaking].”

Glover, a custodial specialist at the university, reads three newspapers a day to stay abreast of state and federal issues that affect him and other unionized workers both on and off the job. He contacts lawmakers regularly.

Education on the issues is one key to building political strength. Voting is another. “Look at voting as electing a boss,” Joe Fox, vice president of PEF and a member of the AFT Public Employees program and policy council, told conference participants.
 

Mission Accomplished?

A sign is posted at the entrance of AFT headquarters with the union’s mission statement, which reads, in part: “Improve the lives of our members and their families. Give voice to their legitimate professional, economic and social aspirations. Strengthen the institutions in which we work. Improve the quality of services we provide. Bring together all members to assist and support one another.”

The 2003 joint national conference brought members from the public employee and healthcare divisions together where they realized “even though we come from different states, we all have similar problems,” said Igoe.

Instead of standing idle “at the altar of unfair economic policies” while the public is “sentenced to the death of a thousand budget cuts,” Feldman told participants, “we have to get out the vote so that we can return our country to a course of common sense and common decency” in 2004. Organizing, political action and fighting for professional conditions at work are not separate activities,” she said.
 

The Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees (BCFPE) knows firsthand the pitfalls of privatization—particularly the contracting out of prison functions. Dietary service at the Baltimore County Detention Center, the latest function to be privatized by the Baltimore County Bureau of Corrections, was turned over to ARAMARK Correctional Services in June, displacing about 15 dietary correctional officers.

So the workshop on creative ways to fight privatization, sponsored by the Corrections and Criminal Justice Coalition (CCJC) at the 2003 joint national conference, was not only informative, it was timely.

CCJC administrators Steve Chand and Ann Beser told the group of correctional officers and local staff representatives that the taxpaying public typically does not care about what happens “behind the bars until it comes out in front of the bars,” which means unions and other groups must aggressively engage policymakers and the public about the moral, public safety and economic issues of privatization.

Taxpayers need to know that they will be paying for a private prison’s infrastructure—roads and sewers—while the company that will be running the facility gets a corporate tax break, and sometimes pays no taxes at all, Chand says.

Continuous dialogue over the inherent governmental function of the justice system is a necessity, too. Only governments have the right to incarcerate and the authority to use force, say Chand and Beser, but some privately run prisons have tried to add time to sentences as a form of discipline.

Back in Baltimore, BCFPE president Jeff Magness addressed the county council during a public comment period at a May meeting where he asked the council if the “$250,000 that is said will be the savings for privatizing [the dietary department] is worth the safety of a community and lives?”

BIOTERROR: POLICY PRIORITIES VERSUS CONCRETE PLANS

Healthcare workers have to look at bioterrorism as an occupational hazard, says Rosemary Sokas, the director of Environment and Occupational Health Science at the University of Chicago’s School of Public Health. “Your exposure to it can be life threatening,” she said.

Sokas joined Jonathan Rosen, the director of the health and safety department at the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF), and Chris Niles, a member of AFT Healthcare-Maryland, who is a registered nurse with the Frederick County (Md.) Health Department, to present Union Concerns about Bioterror Preparedness Plans, to an audience of both public sector and private sector healthcare workers.

It is crucial for hospitals and clinics—the facilities and the employees—to be prepared for the possibility of a bioterror event, Sokas said. Specifically, facilities must have decontamination centers and proper ventilation in place. Workers, on the other hand, she said, must be trained to recognize symptoms of exposure to biological and chemical agents, and they must know their role in an emergency.

Rosen told the group that one way to find out if your facility is prepared is to ask. “You have the right to see a hospital’s emergency preparedness plan,” he said, adding that if there is no plan, “have your union talk with facility [management] about training, equipment and contingency plans.”

That’s what union members did at the State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. When hospital administration approached healthcare workers to volunteer for its first-responder team earlier this year, many were hesitant. Being part of the team meant getting the smallpox vaccine—and the hospital was unable to provide workers with relevant information about the program, says Jemma Marie Hanson, a PEF member who is a registered nurse.

With PEF’s help, the workers put together their own plan that called for proper training, education and screening of participants. When the workers’ demands were met, the hospital got its volunteers.

Ken McNair, a public health advisor at Baltimore’s Druid Health District and vice president of the City Union of Baltimore (CUB), attended the workshop to find out what CUB can do on its end to open dialogue on preparedness. The Baltimore Health Department does not have a concrete plan, McNair said, yet “we would be first responders.”

Ironically, Rosen said, the White House’s focus on a public health response to bioterror has come at a cost. Specifically, he says government funding to support public health is not increasing to cover bioterror preparedness. Rather, money is being diverted from other public health programs, which “flies in the face of building up public health and training public health workers.”

It is a tricky predicament for all healthcare workers, who within the last year alone, have had to contend with such emerging, naturally occurring, infections as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and monkeypox. “HIV/AIDS was considered an emerging infection” when it first appeared in the United States, Rosen said, driving home that public health readiness, in general, should be the priority.

EMERGENCY ACTION PLANS CENTRAL TO WORKER SAFETY

“Close your eyes. If there was an emergency, would you be able to get out of this room safely?” So asked Darrell Hornback, field training director for the International Chemical Workers Union Council’s Center for Worker Health and Safety Education, opening a two-part workshop on emergency action plans.

Whether a terrorist attack or a fire, most people are hurt during emergencies because of a lack of training, said Hornback. But by researching, writing and rehearsing a companywide emergency action plan, most employees can avoid injuries.

A comprehensive plan, Hornback noted, involves having multiple exit routes, following Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations, designating emergency leaders and creating numerous communication methods to alert employees of danger, among other things. Safety is one area in which labor and management most easily agree, he said, and cooperation on safety matters can create a solid foundation for future negotiations.

Tony Evans, a vice president of the Maryland Professional Employees Council, an affiliate of AFT Public Employees, agrees.

Evans says labor and management at the Maryland Department of Agriculture where he works as an emergency services officer have worked well together in the past developing emergency plans. But the workshop, he says, helped him realize that the department’s plan should be updated—and broadened.