SEIU Local 535

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Sister Locals: SEIU Local 535 and Georgia SEIU Local 1985 partner up for public sector locals

SEIU is a"bookend" Union. We have member density on the west and east coasts with a few isolated pockets in the middle. To begin to solve this problem, a strategic alliance was established between SEIU Local 535 and our sister SEIU Union from Georgia, Local 1985. "We will be helping their struggle and renewing our own," said David Kramer, 535's executive director.

The intent of the alliance is to provide Local 1985 resources and the wealth of experience we have from 40 years of breaking ground for public sector workers in California.

"The struggle in Georgia is the struggle for our future. Not SEIU's future but every public employee in California and their family, their children, and their grandchildren. Georgia's public employees used to have civil service protection which California public employees enjoy and today they are 'at-will' employees.

"Unless we are successful in Georgia it could just as easily be California's public employees on the wrong end of a political deal at some point in the future," said Damita Davis Howard, 535's program director. A delegation of sisters and brothers from Local 1985 attended a recent 535 executive board meeting and talked about being a public employee in Georgia where there is no right for public employees to have a union.

The 535 executive board delegates heard the stories of Rita Goodman and Chequita Stephens about life on the front lines for Georgia's public employees. Many heard for the first time and others were reminded about what a difference 40 years of Local 535 contract negotiations, political action, and workplace activism makes.

Chequita Stephens, a Dekalb County (home of Atlanta) eligibility worker, told of her experience as a new hire. "When I signed my letter of acceptance I posed the question, "Do food stamps come with the paycheck?" They are hiring eligibility workers at $23,600 per year."

After she completed her six-week she discovered a new caseload had been built for her with 500 cases. "At that time in Dekalb County they made no distinction between intake and ongoing cases. Inside of three months my caseload had increased to over 800 families."

Dekalb County subsequently separated the functions of intake and ongoing cases. Chequita was chosen to do intake. At the time she made the change to exclusively intake work, her caseload was 1,407.

Rita Goodman, a children’s social worker in Clay County, located in the southwest corner of the state on the border with Alabama, talked about social workers carrying caseloads as high as 90. Local 535 Field Representative Wren Bradley, who spent two months in Georgia working with Local 1985 members to help them organize around workplace issues, described the transition she went through when she got on the ground in Georgia. “I would go to worksite meetings and after hearing their horror stories I would say ‘they can’t do that!’” SEIU’s staffer assigned to Local 1985 would remind Bradley she was in Georgia.

“And then I understood I was in a ‘right-to-work state’,” where the boss could fire you on the spot if they didn’t like the color of your hair or the shoes you put on that morning.

One of our planning steps for the new year includes a meeting with representatives from SEIU 1985 to determine next steps for our collaboration.

Our commitment to Georgia’s public employees is part of Local 535’s commitment to implementing SEIU’s 2004-08 Public Services Division Plan coming out of SEIU’s 2004 international convention.

The first point of the division plan—Build National Strength—challenges us to “build a national public services union with the strength to raise and protect standards for pay, benefits, staffing, training and quality in public services by uniting public service workers in new organizing states…including Georgia.”

And again SEIU Local 535 rises to the challenge of building a stronger labor movement in new and innovative ways.