AFSCME activists' reform push falls short

In an uncontested delegate election last month, Lee Saunders and Elissa McBride, the president and secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, respectively, were re-elected to their posts at the union’s bi-annual convention in Los Angeles. 

But because AFSCME’s top officers are elected by delegates from each of the union’s roughly 3,400 locals, the vast majority of AFSCME’s 1.5 million members — including the 150,000 members of District Council 37 — did not directly vote for either. 

That’s something that a small group of delegates are hoping to change by introducing a “one member, one vote" system to AFSCME, the nation’s largest public-sector union. The system, which would allow AFSCME’s members to directly elect the union's top leaders, has been adopted by other large unions, among them the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters, and has recently contributed to the ousting of incumbent union leaders.  

“One member, one vote would be moving in the direction of an actual member-led union,” said Dee Bowers, an archivist for the Brooklyn Public Library who spoke at the convention in support of a resolution calling for the creation of an ad-hoc committee to take up the issue. “I feel like [that] is what a union is supposed to be." 

Reform-minded delegates also proposed two other constitutional changes designed to bring more transparency to elections for convention delegates and selections for convention committees. The delegates pushing these initiatives, members of various AFSCME district councils across the country, initially got together to advocate for their union to take a stronger stand in support of Palestinian workers but quickly found that pro-democracy initiatives went hand in hand with their political advocacy. 

“Our group, we call ourselves ‘Green 4 Falasteen,’ but we came together as a group of people interested in organizing for rank-and-file power and greater democracy who are also interested in pushing for a better policy for Palestine,” said Adrienne Seely, the author of the one member, one vote resolution. “We envisage both the rank-and-file [advocacy] and Palestine [advocacy] as completely intertwined. As soon as you try to push on Palestine, all of the issues of not having rank and file democracy come to the surface." 

AFSCME’s executive board advocated against the three resolutions brought by Seely’s cohort and they were rejected in a voice vote on the convection floor. Honda Wang, a delegate from DC 37’s Local 1549, which represents municipal clerical-administrative employees, said the “convention was tilted heavily against” one member, one vote. Wang said he sensed that some of the arguments made against it were “belittling, elitist and anti-democratic." 

‘You’re there to rubber stamp’

But AFSCME delegates did pass a resolution, recommended by the union’s executive board and in line with some of the demands that advocates for Palestinians have raised, calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and for the return of Israeli hostages. But Seely, a catalog librarian at the Chicago Public Library and member of Local 1215, said that resolution doesn’t go far enough.

Her group proposed having AFSCME sign onto a letter sent to President Joe Biden by seven international unions calling for the U.S to stop sending military support to Israel. But that resolution also failed.  

Seely said that Green 4 Falasteen’s resolutions were hoping to tackle “structural challenges” that prevent rank and file workers from engaging with the international union. Challenges that AFSCME members mentioned include delegates’ penchant for voting in tandem with the recommendations of AFSCME's executive board, a requirement that two-thirds of delegates approve constitutional amendments and that convention ballots are conducted by voice vote.  

“There’s a lot of structures in place to prevent any kind of impetus coming from the rank and file unless it aligns with what the executive board wants to happen,” Seely argued. "Even as delegates, people don’t expect to be participating in a democratic process. The feeling is that you're there to rubber stamp what the executive board is saying." 

Whether a resolution passes is determined by whether the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ votes predominate on the convention floor. Only if the vote is close does more precise balloting occur. 

"People who yell louder have more of a voice in a voice vote regardless of how many members they represent,” Bowers, the Brooklyn librarian, said. “That’s an absolutely insane way to conduct business for a union with 1.5 million members.”  

Even if the one member, one vote committee had been created, there’s no guarantee that the initiative would be implemented by the next AFSCME convention in 2026, George Olken, the president of the Brooklyn Library Guild and a delegate, pointed out. He said that many members are still learning how democracy works within AFSCME. "The more the union processes are known to members the more the members can build the union that they want it to be,” he said. “It's about building power over time." 

Anthony Wells, the president of DC 37 Local 371 and an AFSCME international vice president, said that AFSCME’s final resolution on Palestine represented a compromise position between differing factions in the union. “AFSCME's system is working,” he said of the one member, one vote initiative. "I think what we have is fine. It’s not undemocratic."  

He pointed out that the presidents of each local union are elected by majority vote. “It’s up to each union to get their members involved and to have a voice and that's what we do in our local and in DC 37,” he argued. "The people who believe in [one member, one vote] should continue to come to voice their opinion." 

dfreeman@thechiefleader.com

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