AFSCME’s Next Wavers sign up new members for Missouri Home Care Union

AFSCME Next Wave members in St. Louis recently signed up 46 new members for the Missouri Home Care Union, AFSCME Council 72, which last year began negotiating its first contract.

The effort was part of an organizing training program for member volunteers during the Next Wave National Advisory Committee meeting.

Some 800 member volunteers are being trained as part of our AFSCME’s “50,000 Stronger” campaign to boost membership ranks.

Next Wave is made up of new and young AFSCME members throughout the nation.

‘ORGANIZING MEMBERS MAKES US STRONGER’

“We’re standing on common ground,” said Next Waver Orlando Rivera, Jr., of Local 371, DC 37, in New York City. “It’s the same fight everywhere, and organizing members is what makes us all stronger.”

Missouri voters in 2008 overwhelmingly approved giving the state’s 13,000 Medicaid-funded home care attendants the freedom to bargain for improved client care and working conditions.

Attendants voted in 2009 to form the Missouri Home Care Union, a partnership between AFSCME Council 72 and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

In 2012, a state Supreme Court decision established union freedom for home care attendants, ruling that the state must certify an election for 13,000 home care workers who voted to be represented by the Missouri Home Care Union.

HONORED TO BE PART

MacArthur Jackson, Jr., a new member of the Missouri Home Care Union, said it was “an honor” to be “part of a national force for workers.

“It takes people getting involved to get it done,” Jackson said. “And an army of people can do it.”