Phyllis Walker, president of AFSCME Local 3800, delivered the following speech in Detroit Sept. 12 to hundreds of labor activists attending a conference organized by the publication Labor Notes. AFSCME Local 3800 represents nearly 1800 University of Minnesota clerical workers, 93% of whom are women. As we go to press, Local 3800 has announced its intent to strike against a concessionary contract proposal.

Sisters and brothers,

Greetings and solidarity from AFSCME Local 3800, a union of 1800 clerical workers at the University of Minnesota.

Tonight the topic is fighting back in hard times. As is clear from the presentations tonight, if we have leaders with a willingness to fight, flexible tactics, root our strategy in the membership and support the struggles of other unions, we can fight back and win. If, like all too many in the labor movement, we sit back and moan about the state of the world, we can expect concessions, bad contracts and more and more people losing confidence in what unions can do for the working people of this country.

I am happy to report, hard times in our local got us to dig deep within ourselves, to organize our membership and to take the first strike vote in our local’s history.

Our local, which is 93% women, was organized in 1990. Over the years, our local has fought many battles with the employer and won many victories. Several years ago, AFSCME Local 3800 started a two-year long livable wage campaign. We packed hundreds of members into regents meetings and public hearings. In the end, we forced the regents of the University to adopt a policy setting the minimum wage at $12 per hour.

Now the University of Minnesota is the only educational institution in the country with a starting salary of $12.00. And our union made that happen.

I am happy to report our [negotiating] committee is strong and united against concessions. Our staff negotiator is one of the original organizers of our local and shares our vision. We entered negotiations determined to not only fight concessions but also win gains in contract language. We are facing a university employer who is attempting to drive up our health care costs, take away our annual step increases and freeze our wages. The employer is mounting this attack under the guise of the so-called budget crisis. But our message is clear – there is no budget crisis, there is a distribution crisis. The employer has millions to spend on buildings and administrator salaries, but tells frontline workers they must “share the pain”. In response to this attack, we are mounting a vigorous fightback.

In Local 3800, our contract expired on June 30. Management was demanding concessions, so we began telling our members we need to strike.

After we made the decision to fight, we had the best week of negotiations ever. After a long discussion at the beginning of the week, our committee unanimously concluded that we would not accept the employer’s offer, and we came to that decision days before they even handed it to us. Other local unions represented by AFSCME at the university agreed to the concessions, and their membership will vote to ‘accept’ or to ‘reject and strike’ in the next few weeks.

But we were the only union local who left negotiations with smiles on our faces! Even though we picked a tough fight, we knew that we made the right decision. I am proud to say that even with all the Teamsters and other AFSCME bargaining units on campus, it is my local, the clerical workers, the women on this campus, who are leading the fight for justice against this huge employer.

Now we are sending teams of member-organizers into the workplace to convince the membership to reject management’s final offer and to strike for the first time in our local’s history.

In carrying out our fight, we draw on some good examples of unions in the Twin Cities and around the country who have been fighting back in these tough times.

Nationally, the Yale workers are an inspiration to us all with creative tactics and militant strikes.

Locally, SEIU Local 113 led a series of one-day strikes this spring against several Twin City hospitals. They made impressive gains despite high unemployment, despite the threats of the employer, and despite the fact that their membership had never been asked to fight like that before.

Local 17 of HERE in the Twin Cities linked the struggle for immigrant rights with the struggle of hotel workers organizing and a contract campaign. They impacted the debate on immigrants’ rights and working conditions on a national level and mobilized thousands of workers and supporters.

We joined with the Welfare Rights Committees in Minnesota and progressive unions like UFCW Local 789 to demand “tax the rich” to save social programs and funding for education.

However, the majority of unions adopted the ‘Take Back Minnesota’ campaign. Despite its rhetoric, ‘Take Back Minnesota’ means building an infrastructure to elect Democrats; it means subordinating the interests of workers to the fate of Democratic party officials who want, more than anything else, to get re-elected.

In the end, the Democratic leadership in the Senate predictably gave in to almost the full package of cuts to university financing, welfare benefits and health care spending. This is an example of what we see over and over again – unions putting party loyalty ahead of their own interests and independence. If the entire union movement had embraced the ‘Tax the Rich’ campaign, fought the cuts and held the Democrats accountable, the result would have been far different.

Right in our own AFSCME council, we have an example of fighting back in hard times – because what can be harder than taking 18,000 state workers out on strike in the emotionally charged atmosphere surrounding September 11, 2001?

In 2001, our 18,000 sisters and brothers in AFSCME Council 6 knew they would have a tough fight, but they did not know quite how tough it would be. After strike notice had been given, the attacks of September 11 hit. Many expected the union to fold, but instead they stayed strong. Many commentators suggested it was unpatriotic to strike after September 11. The union aggressively countered that idea and brought union firefighters from New York to speak at strike rallies. Our local’s members enthusiastically supported the strike, setting up picket lines at offices near the University.

For Local 3800, the hard times we face have made our decisions easier. We must fight back. The alternative is only a freefall to the bottom. As I have found in my own local, the harder we fight back, the stronger our union is. More and more members are getting involved; our union is far more relevant to the lives of our members when we are standing and fighting. A willingness to fight and a willingness to be creative in how we respond to the attacks against us is the formula for a stronger labor movement. And by supporting our sisters and brothers in their struggles, we all become much stronger. Local 3800 of AFSCME joins with all of you here tonight at Labor Notes and thousands of others around the country in building the stronger unions that working people everywhere need.

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