Creating strong unions takes work and dedication

This piece is the second of a two-part series on grassroots union building at the workplace. This article now focuses on creating a city-wide union local that is oriented from the bottom up.

Today, unions are under attack by well-funded anti-labor organizations and union-busting management. The Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. AFSCME decision allows public sector union members to opt out of paying dues while still benefiting from union representation. In this environment, members are constantly bombarded by mail and social media campaigns encouraging them to leave.

For too long, many unions became complacent, forgetting that our movement was born from the grassroots. To survive and rebuild, it is imperative that we return to organizing within our workplaces and communities. This is exactly the approach we implemented at Local 1549 DC 37 AFSCME after our election in 2001. Although I retired in 2021, the lessons we learned while rebuilding our local from the bottom up remain vital.

In 2001, our local emerged from a trusteeship. We had a massive, fragmented membership spread across nearly every city agency and public hospital. Our team of like-minded activists won the election on a promise to ensure members were properly represented.

Our term began amid the tragedy of September 11. Our offices at DC 37 were located within the “lockdown zone” near the World Trade Center, forcing us to find alternative space immediately. Because communication is the lifeblood of a union, we improvised by setting up borough-based satellite offices inside public hospitals that we had.

We launched a newsletter to keep members informed of our new locations and held meetings at the old DC 1707 building in Midtown. We refused to let a citywide crisis break our connection to the membership. Thanks to that experience we were able to do basically the same thing during the pandemic.

Once we returned to our headquarters, we shifted out of “survival mode.” We established a rigorous communication schedule, including a monthly membership newsletter and a periodic shop steward bulletin. We formalized monthly committee meetings and conducted agency-by-agency shop steward trainings.

We successfully organized hundreds of Metro-Plus HMO workers into our local with help from AFSCME International staff but mainly thanks to recruiting workers from the agency to help organize other members. We also used our hospital chapter shop stewards in the campaign.

We made sure that we included some of these member organizers from the HMO into local leadership positions. We did the same with younger members who were leading the AFSCME Next Wave program.

The trainings, which predated AFSCME’s “Union Strong” campaign, focused on three key areas: one-to-one contact, teaching activists how to build internal networks through personal conversations; advocacy and politics, helping members understand the direct link between political action and job security; and professional development, utilizing union resources such as the AFSCME International Education Department and the DC 37 Education Department for high-level skill building.

We were the first local in DC 37 to utilize AFSCME staff in trainings. We felt that like the DC 37 staff that we used and our International Union that we paid dues to both were good training resources.

We believed in leading by example. At our triennial Shop Steward Conferences, we featured panels of stewards who shared how they successfully won grievances or increased rally attendance. When an activist achieved a win, they were recognized in the newsletter.

At our political action meetings, we invited elected officials and community leaders to listen to our members and speak with them. We used social events such as holiday parties, the “White Affair” and our Women’s History Month program to build the social fabric of the union.

A union that plays together stays together.

The local actively recruited member activists for political and electoral campaigns. Members made phone calls and attended rallies against budget cuts, opposed wars, and supported contract negotiations. DC 37 tracked participation through sign-in sheets and attendance cards at events like the Union Strong Rally in Foley Square, where our local recorded the highest attendance despite being the third-largest local.

We were consistently recognized by the union’s then Political Action Director as the top local in Get Out the Vote efforts and in the AFSCME COPE program, known as PEOPLE, which raises funds for the national union’s political program.

We enlisted volunteers to help with national electoral mobilizations and union solidarity in 2020. Our members volunteered for phone banking in the Georgia U.S. Senate races and helped both our supported candidates to win. We sent a bus load of volunteers to New Jersey to support our AFSCME affiliate in their governor’s re-election win.

We found that political education was essential in helping members understand the importance of engagement for public employees. This education took place at meetings, in newsletters, and through shop stewards trained to deliver the message in one-on-one and group conversations at worksites.

We emphasized a simple mantra: members’ problems, questions and education must come first. To ensure accountability, we appointed a “Local Troubleshooter” to assist stewards and staff in resolving member issues. We also maintained a constant physical presence at worksites through walk arounds and on-site meetings.

To ensure that our members were serviced properly by DC 37 and our own staff that we hired who were drawn from our shop steward ranks, we asked for feedback if members thought they were not being serviced properly. We did this in our walk arounds, all local meetings and in our newsletters.

This culture of engagement paid off. During budget advocacy campaigns, we didn’t just send staff to testify, we sent member volunteers. As experts in their own work, their testimony was both empowering and the most compelling defense of our services.

The strength of this grassroots model was proven following the Janus decision. While other unions saw members walk away, Local 1549 remained highly resilient. Out of 14,000 workers in our jurisdiction, only fifteen members declined to sign our new “rejoin” union cards, and half of them did not only because they already paid dues to another union.

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for labor, and every local must consider its unique conditions. However, the basic principle remains the same: building at the grassroots level is the key. When leaders are approachable, visible at the worksite, and dedicated to educating and most important in fighting hard for their members, the union becomes more than just a line item on a paycheck. It becomes more powerful and an unbreakable community.