AFT Organizing plan ­envisions shift in ­resources and energy
The AFT has unveiled an organizing plan that envisions a fundamental shift of resources and energy in order to substantially expand the organizing capacity of the national union and its affiliates. Put together by an organizing committee consisting of state and local leaders—including PSRP representatives—and AFT staff, the plan also seeks to stimulate the development of a more active, involved membership.

“The long-term health of the AFT and its affiliates necessitates a much greater attention to organizing,” says AFT secretary-treasurer Nat LaCour, who chairs the organizing committee. He believes the plan will help the AFT remain one of the fastest-growing unions in the labor movement.

At the heart of the systematic, strategic organizing plan is “a concerted, long-term vision to create a more active, involved membership that wants to participate in the union as part of a movement, not just an organization that provides services,” LaCour says.

Essential to the success of the plan is “a real partnership” with state and local affiliates and increased training opportunities for organizers, says Phil Kugler, assistant to the AFT president for organization and field services.

This revitalized focus on organizing, educating and mobilizing members is essential to countering an increasingly hostile environment that threatens the salaries, benefits and pensions of union and nonunion workers alike. A successful organizing plan is also expected to reap benefits in the political arena and make the AFT and its affiliates an even more forceful and influential voice on behalf of members and the institutions in which they work.

The program builds on proven strategies for increasing membership, such as the AFT’s membership consolidation/internal organizing program, which targets the recruitment of employees the union represents but who have yet to become members. It also highlights the need to organize early childhood educators, charter school teachers, and part-time and adjunct higher education faculty.

AFT supporters turn out to urge higher minimum wage
With a lively contingent of aft supporters on hand, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and former Sen. John Edwards called on Congress to pass Kennedy’s Fair Minimum Wage Act at an April rally across the street from the U.S. Capitol. Kennedy’s bill, which Republican leaders in Congress have blocked repeatedly, would raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15 an hour—where it has been for nine years—to $7.25 over the course of two years.

“If you work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, you should not have to live in poverty in the richest country in the world,” Kennedy said. Edwards, whose One America Committee is dedicated to fighting poverty in this country, said “the great moral issue of our time” is the fact that 37 million citizens—including 13 million children—live in poverty. While he vowed to work with Kennedy and other allies in Congress, Edwards said, “If we can’t do it here, we’ll do it across the country.” He also announced that close to 100,000 citizens from across the country have signed a petition, as part of a nationwide grass-roots movement, to become “co-sponsors” of Kennedy’s bill.

Howard University student Alanna Timmerman spoke at the rally about her work with the group Progressive Maryland to get that state’s minimum wage increased. Timmerman said many minimum wage workers told her it is “impossible to provide the bare necessities of life on $5.15 an hour.”

The AFT petition in support of the minimum wage legislation is at www.unionvoice.org/campaign/minimum_wage06.