For the first time, our contract covering 20,000 state employees in Units A, B, C, D, F, and H contains language allowing us to have five Chief Stewards!
All-knowing sources of information. Tour guides to the highways and byways of history. The friendly voice of a morning story time. If that’s all you think of when you think of your library staff, you’d do well to meet some of AFSCME’s library workers, whose reach goes far beyond their libraries’ walls.
Today is National Library Workers Day, when we honor those professionals who keep our libraries running: librarians, technicians and other staff, including custodians, security and maintenance workers.
Fifty-one years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to Memphis to help rally the community around 1,300 AFSCME sanitation workers who had gone on strike.
In the 1980s, I was living and going to school in Minnesota when women who worked for state government won a big victory. They got the state to increase the pay of women in “female dominated jobs” by passing a pay equity bill. In other words, they put a dent in the gender pay gap. As a student, I researched and wrote about the process of crafting, passing and implementing that legislation. And I learned something that I have never forgotten: the union made it happen. And not just any union. Our union: AFSCME.
Our union gained more than 9,000 dues-paying members and nearly 19,000 dues-paying retirees in the last year, suggesting that billionaires and corporations are failing in their effort to “defund and defang” public service unions.
Ready for the fight ahead?Join us at our Regional AFSCME Meetings to stay updated, meet other activists in your agency or region and plan for the fight ahead. Download the flier here!
Workers in Missouri and New Mexico have chalked important victories against anti-worker laws that would have robbed them of their voices and the right to bargain collectively.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 20th, weather predictions are calling for snow and ice starting in the morning into the early afternoon. At this time, no announcement has been made regarding a State of Emergency or closure of any state agencies. In preparation for inclement weather, please stay safe and Know Your Rights if you are working.
