January 2022
From the President
Greetings Friends,
I wish I could greet you with a “whew, aren’t we glad we’ve vanquished our foe COVID and have moved into a new year!” Instead, I will convey my appreciation for the work each of you is doing to provide what our students, families and communities need in spite of the tumultuous conditions – the opportunity to learn and grow through education. Thank you!
At the state federation, 2022 is starting off fully staffed for the first time in nearly a year. After significant changes in the last few years, we have a commanding Organizing Team with many years of collective experience, a newly-formed, ambitious and dedicated Advocacy Team, and an Administrative Support Team operating like a finely oiled machine … with the human qualities that bring out the best in all of us. Put it all together and the result is a very busy winter, with trainings, Lobby Day, the Contingent Faculty Issues Conference and ClassCon 2022 (our school related personnel conference) scheduled between now and mid-March.
The pandemic, following on the heels of the Janus decision, has resulted in a reduction in membership and we will be focusing on membership drives and new organizing this year. As union members, our strength is in our numbers, so the more members we have, the stronger we are. We certified a new unit of exempt staff at Grays Harbor College in December, and we are in the process of partnering with AFT to hire a project organizer to continue organizing unrepresented workers. Membership drives at our locals with large numbers of bargaining unit members who aren’t union members will begin soon, as will our campaign to organize contingent and part-time faculty. We have set a goal of forty new members per month, and we need your involvement to achieve this goal. Your Union Organizing Rep (UOR) will be talking with you about this, but if you’d like to launch a membership drive sooner rather than later, please let them know and we can make that happen. Do you know why most non-members haven’t yet signed up? Simply because they haven’t been asked…we’ve got to making asking a routine part of the day-to-day. Given the uncertainty of the pandemic, we will be exploring and experimenting with ways of engaging new members in workplaces that are primarily remote.
We also want to help you make sure that all new employees learn about and join their union right away: the best way to do that is through new employee orientations. Remember that by law your union has the right to 30 minutes with new employees and we can help you make the most of that time; let your UOR know if you’d like help.
I think we’ve all learned by now that we don’t know what is around the next bend of the pandemic. The ongoing instability is an obstacle to building our union, but it’s an obstacle we can and must overcome. Workers want better working conditions, and labor’s pandemic response has shown many, many workers that unions are the best way to get them. (In case you hadn’t heard, Starbucks workers in eight states are organizing right now). We have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead on this work and your AFT Washington team is ready to go. I hope you’ll join us in the effort!
In solidarity,
Local Highlights and News
Grays Harbor Professional Staff Go Union With AFT
By Bob Downing, State Affiliate Political Organizer
Student Support Specialists, Program Coordinators and Directors, Education Navigators, and other professional exempt staff at Grays Harbor College have organized their union with AFT! The Public Employees Relations Commission certified the new bargaining unit in December following a showing of more than 78% of employees in favor of unionization.
Now professional staff will join with Grays Harbor faculty in having a voice over working conditions as they prepare to bargain their first union contract. The faculty local 4984 is taking steps to include the professional exempt staff as part of their local, which means one big AFT local will include a broad range of Grays Harbor College employees.
Associate Director of Running Start Lori Christmas was central to the organizing drive. As she said, “I was a student here once. Now I help future students enroll. We want our students to succeed, and our College to succeed. By having a union, now we have more tools to ensure our voice is being heard and respected at every level of the institution.”
Solidarity Month is Coming Up!
By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist
As many of you know, in even-numbered years we celebrate and promote solidarity with local, cohort and state-wide events in May. Planning is underway for several events (see below) and we’d like your local to participate too. In past years we have held a career pathways and civic engagement event, a book give-away and resource fair, and food drives. Please add this item to your next board meeting – celebrating and promoting solidarity can take many forms and we want to make the most of this opportunity.
There are a number of events already in the works! To give some examples:
- AFT National has launched Reading Opens The World, a multiyear campaign in conjunction with First Book and the AFL-CIO to get books and literacy resources into the hands of educators, parents and students.
- The Human Rights Committee will be hosting an equity summit on May 21st, focused on working with community groups, constituency groups, and other unions to advance equity, inclusion and belonging goals.
- Lake Washington Institute of Technology is hosting a May Day event
- Cross-union bargaining solidarity
Start working with your boards now about how best to build solidarity in May, and talk to your UOR. We’d like to coordinate across locals and we have some funding available to support activities. The last two years have led to an unprecedented surge in worker organizing and worker power, as we saw in the major strikes of last fall. We’ve seen what standing in solidarity with each other can do. Let’s celebrate it, and build power while we’re at it!
The Legislative Session is Underway
By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist
The 2022 Legislative Session started this week. This year’s session is a short (60-day) session, so things are moving very quickly indeed. If you’re interested in getting involved in our political work, you can sign up for the Legisletter here, or you can contact Cortney Marabetta at cmarabetta@aftwa.org for other ways to get involved. And we’ve got a registration link for Lobby Day in this issue of the Pulse!
Curious to know what’s on our Legislative Agenda? You can check it out here.
Welcome Gissel Uribe, Our New Union Organizing Representative!
By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist
This week, AFT Washington welcomed our newest (but very experienced) Union Organizing Representative, Gissel Uribe, who said:
"I’m really excited to be joining AFT Washington this year. As we all know, times are changing and with them so are our working conditions and our home lives. I believe having a strong union membership is the best way to get us through hard times and the collective power it will take to create a future we are proud of. I come with many years of experience both in the labor movement and community organizing in California, Arizona, Colorado, and Washington State. My goal is to share the tools I’ve learned over the years and grow with you all."
You can reach out to Gissel at guribe@aftwa.org, and some of you have met her already. She’s working hard to get up to speed, so expect to see her soon. Welcome, Gissel!
Union Tips And Reminders
Telling Your Story to Legislators
Thursday, January 20th OR Thursday, February 17th, 5:00 PM
As frontline education workers, we have important stories to tell about how our working conditions affect our student’s learning conditions. This workshop is designed to prepare you for lobbying legislators and testifying at committee hearings in relationship to creating a just, equitable and properly funded public education system.
At this workshop you will leave with tools to effectively tell your story:
- How to find out who is your legislator
- The committee(s) legislators serve on and how this affects legislation we support
- How to tell an impactful story and practice storytelling
Register here.
Join Us For Virtual Lobby Day 2022!
Lobby Day is February 21st! Last year’s passage of the landmark bill SB 5194 shows that when we fight alongside our community, we win! Let’s build on this work by making sure we are expanding access to wraparound services for our students, benefits for our early childhood educators, student loan forgiveness for our contingent and part-time faculty, and other key legislation.
We are RSVPing early this year to make sure we have appointments set up with key legislators or their staff. You will receive more information as the date for Lobby Day gets closer.
If you have any questions about Lobby Day, please contact Anna-Marie Magdalena, State Affiliate Political Organizer, at amagdalena@aftwa.org or 206-475-8775.
Register here.
Adjuncts Building Community Virtual Conference 2022
The Contingent Faculty Issues Committee is excited to announce this annual conference, hosted by AFT Washington and co-sponsored by Washington Education Association (WEA). Day one will feature Joe Berry and Helena Worthen, co-authors of Power Despite Precarity: Strategies for the Contingent Faculty Movement in Higher Education and a workshop on how to tell the story of your precarity, with a view toward meeting with elected leaders. Day two is professional development focused: SB 5194 has resulted in 200 adjunct-to-full-time faculty position conversions. Workshops will discuss teaching philosophies, diversity statements, and preparing for the interview. There is no cost to members to register.
Join us Friday and Saturday, February 25th and 26th! Register here.
Save The Date! Classified Conference 2022 Goes Virtual!
Saturday, March 12th, 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM
To encourage the broadest participation, Classified Conference 2022 will be virtual again this year.
A variety of workshops are being discussed, including:
- Preparing for Retirement
- The COVID Economy and School Nutrition Programs
- The Neurodiverse Classroom
- Student Loan Debt Clinic
- Resilience in Early Learning
- Equity in preK-12 Learning
- Know Your Contract, Know Your Rights and Responsibilities
Presenters include Christina Wong of Northwest Harvest, Dr. Hector Saez-Nunez, PhD from AFT Yakima Local 1485, The Labor Education and Research Center, and the AFT Washington Retiree Chapter.
If you are interested in being part of the Classified Conference planning committee, please contact Anna-Marie Magdalena amagdalena@aftwa.org, or 206-475-8775.
Communications Help Is Available
Is your local not sure how to best use your website? Did you know you can have a free website? Would you like help with figuring out strategies for better communications outreach? Got something for the whole union to hear about? We can help with all of these, and more!
On top of helping your local, we can provide outreach to the union as a whole, through the Pulse and the Union Spotlight. We are actively interested in anything your members are doing, such as workshops or innovative problem solving.
If you have questions about them, want guidance, or are interested in learning more, please contact Cortney Marabetta at cmarabetta@aftwa.org.
AFT Connect: Better Data For A Stronger Union
Connect is AFT’s new, powerful, web-based, secure data management system. It provides a great way to record individual member data, and so much more!
- Track your local’s support from Community Allies.
- Record member event attendance.
- Create forms and surveys.
- Capture detailed employment and employer information.
- Manage COPE and other local committees.
Readily use these features and more through AFT Connect’s dashboard or let Connect help your local turn data into a powerful tool through easy, customizable reports.
Connect is replacing both Membership Suite and the Affiliate Toolkit Workspace. Get ahead of the rush and sign your local up to use Connect today!
To get started with AFT Connect, contact Christine Landon at clandon@aftwa.org.