Freedom Socialist • Vol. 23, No. 3 • October-December 2002

AFSCME convention reflects concern over war and recession

by Steve Hoffman and Wendy McPherson

Ivan Corpeño-Chavez, a Los Angeles librarian and delegate to the AFSCME convention this past June, doesn’t have to go far to get a good look at the effects of the "war on terrorism."

With military spending top priority for both Democrats and Republicans, Corpeño-Chavez notes, employment is suffering everywhere else. Describing the threatened layoffs of 5,000 public health workers in Los Angeles County, he says, "It’s going to devastate the whole community! If you don’t have a job, where are you going to go for healthcare?"

More than 4,000 delegates grappled with similar questions at this year’s national convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, held June 24-28 in Las Vegas.

Union leaders decried the problems AFSCME members and other workers face, but laid out no effective strategy for tackling them. Instead, they slated much of the convention time for speeches by Democratic Party politicians, who offered lots of endearing family stories but no promises to stop the erosion of jobs and living standards.

But AFSCME is made up of public employees who struggle daily to provide quality services with shrinking resources. Many are all too aware that the bombs dropped on Afghan villages have not only wiped out more than $50 billion from state budgets across the U.S., but have also devastated civil liberties and the rights of immigrants.

At the convention, delegates took to the floor to make these points, and more. And by week’s end, an AFSCME antiwar caucus had formed!

 

AFSCME ranks: hard hit and hitting back. In the year or so leading up to the convention, AFSCME members around the country struck and organized against layoffs and take-backs, starting with a one-day walkout of Washington state workers in April 2001.

In Minnesota in October 2001, amid the immediate post-9/11 hysteria, 18,000 AFSCME and other unionists stood up to charges of being unpatriotic and waged a successful two-week strike.

This year, Illinois AFSCME formed a coalition with 200 social service advocacy organizations and mobilized for progressive tax reform that would raise revenue and stay the budget ax. Despite a hard-fought campaign, not one single Democrat would sponsor their tax bill in the state legislature, and 6,000 AFSCME members lost their jobs.

Even though job cuts due to privatization and budget cuts are decimating its rolls, AFSCME is growing. This is thanks to aggressive unionization campaigns that strike a chord with unorganized public employees who recognize the need for a collective voice on the job. A whole day of the convention was devoted to hearing exhilarating stories of these new AFSCME members who battled to establish unions at their workplaces — and won.

AFSCME’s fresh recruits from places like California and Puerto Rico are insisting on the importance of such issues as immigrant rights, internationalism, and women’s leadership. Puerto Rican delegate Sandra Pacheco, for instance, is intent on organizing with other women to run for election to her AFL-CIO council. Says Pacheco, "The double workload keeps women from participating. But we’re going to encourage women to become delegates."

The often sophisticated political consciousness of members has its effect on AFSCME officials. At the convention, this was reflected by the presence of guest speakers from Colombia and Argentina, union leaders who talked about the disastrous effects of corporate globalization and U.S. policies in Latin America.

 

Connecting the dots. Several delegations from union locals came to the convention packing resolutions that addressed burning international issues and the question of union democracy.

From Los Angeles Local 2626 and Seattle Local 304 came an antiwar resolution that linked Bush’s open-ended "war on terrorism" to cuts in social services and attacks on people’s rights, especially those of immigrants. Another Seattle resolution called for support for Palestinian workers and an end to $6 billion a year in U.S. funding of the Israeli occupation. A resolution from Local 1221 in Spokane, Washington, defended the right of union members to debate controversial issues without being baited as communists or terrorists.

LA Local 2626 led the charge in support of the antiwar resolution. Thousands of copies were handed to fellow conventioneers, accompanied by plain talk about how the war hurts working people. And a bonus feature of this effort was the cooperation it produced among members of different left organizations.

AFSCME officials, loath to allow for discussion of resolutions that would put them at odds with national AFL-CIO policy, tried various bureaucratic maneuvers to keep any of them from even getting to the floor. Unfortunately, they succeeded with the resolutions on union democracy and Palestine. But the antiwar resolution had too much organizing behind it, and they had to bring it to the floor for debate.

Always calculating, they raised it immediately after an emotional September 11 tribute and avoided calling on antiwar speakers. Still, the resolution garnered 20-30 percent of the vote. Even better, the organizing for the resolution resulted in an ongoing caucus named AFSCME Workers Against the War.

Two dozen delegates from six cities across the country formed AWAW at the convention and laid plans for continuing to push AFSCME to oppose the war. As Brenda Stokely, president of New York District Council 1707, explained: "We need to stand up against these wars. If we’re for the idea of ‘an injury to one is an injury to all,’ then we need to extend that concept internationally."

 

Fight for union democracy key. Free and open debate is crucial to the survival of the labor movement. This truth was the spur for the resolution from Local 1221 in Spokane, which called for the removal of vague language in the AFL-CIO constitution that easily could be used to persecute union radicals. The language resembles the phrasing of loyalty oaths contained in the infamously antilabor Taft-Hartley Act, which was passed after World War II to smash the militancy of the CIO. The resolution, first passed at a Washington State Labor Council convention as a result of organizing spearheaded by the Freedom Socialist Party, has been passed unanimously by several labor bodies.

As the bosses continue to use the war as an excuse to slash services and attack civil liberties, the 1.4 million members of AFSCME will surely fight back. But for them to gain any real ground, they must be able to see through the flag-waving, "support our troops" manipulation and demand that the AFL-CIO stop cheerleading for U.S. foreign policy. And to give unionists the chance to come to this perspective, the ability to democratically discuss these issues within the movement is an absolute necessity.

For copies of any resolution discussed here, contact stevhoff@ earthlink.net. For AWAW info, send a message to afscmewaw-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Type "subscribe" and your name.
 

Steve Hoffman represents the Washington Federation of State Employees Local 304 on the King County Labor Council; Wendy McPherson is a delegate from AFSCME Local 2626 to the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

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