When dietary and laundry workers at North Dakota State Hospital in Jamestown heard their jobs were going to be eliminated, they turned to their union--the North Dakota Public Employees Association (NDPEA)--for help.

While there is nothing unusual about workers turning to their union in time of need, what is different in this situation is that only a fraction of the affected workers were dues-paying members when state hospital superintendent Alex Schweitzer proposed reducing payroll through a combination of cutting positions and replacing state employees with prison labor from the adjacent James River Correctional Facility.

Schweitzer's plan launched an employee-driven union membership drive. Nearly 30 longtime state hospital workers joined the NDPEA, an affiliate of AFT Public Employees. "I had never had a problem before," says Theresa Dunn, a dietary employee who joined the NDPEA when she learned her job of 26 years was on the line. Ditto for Paulette Barnick who has worked at the hospital for 14 years.

While the NDPEA knew what steps the workers needed to take to launch a campaign to save their jobs, their paychecks and their healthcare benefits, it has been the employees' determination to fight an unjust plan that has given the union's effort a voice. "I think [hospital administration] thought we would not fight back," says Stacy Petrek, who has been a NDPEA member for several years.

With the leg work of its members, the NDPEA launched a statewide campaign to derail the downsizing plan. One of the union's first responses was a statewide petition detailing the shortcomings of the proposal. Affected hospital workers sent petitions to relatives throughout the state, NDPEA circulated petitions among its statewide membership, and the state AFL-CIO urged union presidents to collect signatures from their respective memberships.

At press time, the union had gathered more than 3,000 signatures and counting, says Kelly Noack, NDPEA project coordinator.

Their campaign also included a meeting with Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple and Duane Houdek, health and human services policy advisor, as well as a community forum to discuss the impact job cuts at the hospital would have on the Jamestown community.

"It is not only affecting us," says Larry Hoff, who has worked at the hospital for 20 years. "It is affecting people downtown because Jamestown is too small of a community for this to happen to [without negative consequences]. We can't compete with what they would pay the convicts." Hoff says there are three main employers in Jamestown, and the state hospital is one of them.

Noack says the proposal poses a number of issues, ranging from the co-mingling of prisoners and patients to public employees losing their livelihoods. When the plan was first announced in July, 37 positions in the dietary and laundry departments were targeted. Since, Noack says, Gov. John Hoeven has proposed converting part of the state hospital campus into a women's prison, which will affect more than 100 jobs throughout the hospital.

Noack insists that lawmakers have a responsibility to justify the plan, which, she says, "attacks vulnerable populations"--the low-wage state hospital workers, the patients and the prisoners, many sharing the same substance and mental health problems as the patients.

The outcome of the campaign will be determined by the Legislature during its 2003 session. The plan will officially be introduced to the Legislature in Gov. Hoeven's 2003-05 biennial budget proposal.

Noack says the union will present the signed petitions to the Legislature when it convenes in January 2003. "They can't deny 3,000-plus signatures," says Noack, adding that the NDPEA will continue to take every opportunity, through personal visits, phone calls and letters, to let North Dakota lawmakers know that balancing the budget on the backs of working families is not sound public policy.