
          Building the Union in an Anti-Union Age
          By Acuff, StewartStewart Acuff and Sarason, RobertRobert Sarason
          Vol. 9, No. 1, 1987, pp. 10-11
          
          How does a labor union organize and represent a group of employees
who neither have a collective bargaining contract nor any federal or
state collective bargaining legislation under the protections of the
National Labor Relations Act? In light of the Reagan Administration's
repeated efforts to gut the National Labor Relations Act, many
national leaders have struggled with that question.
          A group of state employees in Georgia is seeking an answer by
organizing with the Georgia State Employees Association (GSEA),
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1985/AFL-CIO. Since
public employees are not covered by federal law and since collective
bargaining for public employees is illegal in Georgia (and most
Southern_states), GSEA Local 1985 is using other less traditional and
more militant ways to organize and represent its constituency.
          The short history of Local 1985 is full of creativity, democratic,
mass actions, rank-and-file involvement, and sophisticated political
maneuvering.
          GSEA was founded in 1974 as an independent association for state
employees. After years of frustration and limited effectiveness with
state government the leadership decided in 1985 to affiliate with the
Service Employees International Union. In September 1985 the local
hired Stewart Acuff as executive director, who came to the local with
a background in community organizing and labor organizing at Beverly
Enterprises Nursing Homes.
          Three hundred workers from every area of the state gathered for the
founding convention in October 1985 in Milledgeville, home of the huge
Central State Hospital. It was the largest labor gathering ever of
state employees in Georgia. A significant part of the day was the
adoption by all three hundred workers, after a two-hour discussion, of
a legislative agenda.
          Over the next two months, eighty workers in Rome met with their
state legislators and thirty workers in Augusta met with their
legislative delegation. On December 18 the new union brought one
hundred hospital workers to the State Capitol to jam a legislative
hearing and describe their working conditions and their proposed
legislation to improve those conditions.
          The Georgia Legislature began their annual forty-day session in
January. By then, GSEA Local 1985 had put together a network of
legislative activists from all over the state, recruited four
legislative interns from Morehouse College, and made a number of
friends in the Georgia Legislature--their first two bills had thirteen
cosponsors. But the peak of the session for these state workers was
Lobby Day on February 20. Some three hundred and fifty union members
converged on the Capitol that day to personally push for better pay, a
more equitable pay raise formula, less restrictive political activity
rules for state employees, better sick leave and grievance
legislation, and day care facilities for state employees.
          Hilda Stonebreaker, the current president and former executive
director who engineered the affiliation with SEIU, described the first
Lobby Day and the entire first session as huge successes: "We got
more money out of the governor than was recommended by the Merit
System and his budget people. We got even a little more from the
legislative appropriations committees, we passed a day care bill on
the last day of the session, and we got a study committee created to
look at two other bills. We got more than we expected. Even more
importantly, the whole process of grassroots lobbying and flexing our
muscles on Lobby Day was very empowering for our members. It gave them
the sense that they had more political strength than they had ever
considered."
          But Local 1985 wanted to be much more than just a good lobbying
organization. The members wanted to hold and exercise power at the
worksite--regardless of what the law said about collective bargaining
for public employees. And that would take nuts and bolt
organizing. The leadership decided to focus early organizing on
employees of Georgia's mental health and mental retardation hospitals
and facilities.
          The first target was Georgia Retardation Center in Metro
Atlanta. After a three-month organizing drive twenty employees marched
from the entrance to their admin-

istrator's office to demand meetings
between management and employees and to demand informal
recognition. Those employees took with them Herb Mabry, President of
the Georgia AFLCIO, Richard Ray, President of the Atlanta Labor
Council, and James Orange. organizing coordinator of the Industrial
Union Department and a leader in the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC).
          On that day in late January twenty workers met with their
administrator for three hours, set a regular schedule of monthly
meetings, and Local 1985 had a proven, workable organizing model.
          With a significant subsidy from the international SEIU, Local 1985
hired two veteran organizers, Lou Sartor and Jean Davis, in February
1985 to organize Central State Hospital in Milledgeville.
          By August, nearly half of the hospital's 2,500 eligible workers
were union members.
          The drive had three major milestones. In June, fifty union members
held a news conference in front of the facility outlining their
reasons for organizing, detailing their grievances, and appealing to
the community for support. The next month the union held a rally and
picnic at a Milledgeville park. James Orange and Thunderbolt
Patterson, an ex-professional wrestler, were guest speakers. About
1,900 workers came to eat barbequed chicken and show their
support. Finally, on July 28, one hundred Central State Hospital
workers gathered again at the facility's entrance. This time the
employees demanded meetings and informal recognition as their
counterparts at Georgia Retardation Center had already done.
          After a brief rally and a march of about fifty yards, they were met
by the Central State police force. The officer in charge announced
that all state employees who proceeded with the march would be
detained and subject to dismissal and all non-state employees would be
arrested for criminal trespassing. The marchers knelt in prayer, sang
two songs, and Acuff stepped across the line into the hands of the
police [at this writing, Georgia attorney general Mike Bowers was
prosecuting Acuff]. The march turned into a picket line which stayed
up the rest of the day.
          Just a few weeks later, seven workers from Central State
interrupted a Department of Human Resources board meeting to demand
monthly meetings in Milledgeville. James Ledbetter, DHR Commissioner,
granted the workers' request on the spot. One day later, Ledbetter
reversed the decision after Central State Superintendent Myers Kurtz
drove to Atlanta and made a direct personal appeal to Ledbetter.
          The union decided not to get bogged down in a lengthy fight in
Milledgeville but to continue organizing at additional facilities and
to use the pressure of more workers at more facilities organized to
push the department. The local also hired a veteran organizer to work
with employees at Gracewood Hospital in Augusta.
          On October 2, 1986, two hundred workers from Central State,
Gracewood, and the Georgia Retardation Center converged on Atlanta for
the most militant and exciting action the union had held. The day
started with workers crowding into the DHR Commissioner's office to
demand an immediate meeting and resolution of the
grievances. Commissioner Ledbetter was out of town, but the group
chanted and sang till they got a short meeting with Reuben Lasseter,
DHR Director of Personnel. After that meeting the workers marched the
three blocks to the Capitol for a rally which featured speakers from
every major union in the Atlanta area. During the rally, six rank and
file union leaders along with Rev. Fred Taylor of the SCLC met with
members of Governor Joe Frank Harris's staff.
          Two weeks later, three hundred union delegates and members from all
over the: state gathered in Augusta for their second convention. They
set their legislative agenda, raised their dues so the local could
hire a lawyer, attended workshops on grassroots lobbying and grievance
handling, and made their 1987 plans.
          Immediately after the convention, organizers Lou Sartor and Daisy
Hannah (who had replaced Jean Davis) began a second organizing drive
at Georgia Regional Hospital in Augusta and Mike Tatham began an
organizing drive at Northwest Regional Hospital in Rome.
          In January 1987, the legislative session began and the local is
fighting for more pay and a more equitable pay raise formula, overtime
pay, on-call pay, more political freedom, a state employee hazardous
chemical protection and right-to-know act, and progressive changes in
sick leave policy.
          Before the legislature convened one hundred and fifty workers met
in grassroots lobbying sessions in Rome, Gainesville, Milledgeville,
and Augusta. Additionally, the local leadership has laid out their
legislative agenda with the governor's staff. After the governor in
early January recommended a 2.5 percent raise for state employees,
union members placed two hundred phone calls to members of the House
and Senate appropriations committees to ask for more money. This was
to be followed up with a second mass Lobby Day at the Capitol.
          As the local grows in membership, as the number of organized
worksites increases, as the union's leadership becomes better versed
in Georgia's politics, and as the tactics are refined, the pressure
will build and change will come.
          
            Stewart Acuff is the executive director of GSEA/SEIU
Local 1985. Robert Sarason is a regional coordinator of
SEIU.
          
        
