I attended the 2023 Oregon AFSCME Convention in Salem on April 29 and 30 as 2975’s delegate. Here are a few of the highlights.
We voted to collect one dollar per member per year for a disaster relief fund, beginning this July. This fund, not to exceed $100,000, is intended for Oregon AFSCME members and may include disasters not declared so by the Governor.
We voted to restore our maximum dues rate, or “cap”, to the level intended in our constitution. On July 1, 2023 the dues cap will increase by $2.50 per month per member. Subsequent increases of $2.50 will occur on January 1, 2024 and January 1, 2025. This will affect members at the highest pay scale. The number of members at the cap will drop from 45% to 35%.
We voted to require that the Executive Director be elected by the Convention every four years, beginning in 2025.
We heard an array of speakers, from AFSCME International President Lee Saunders to a gardener at UC Berkeley. The latter, Kathryn Lybarger, spoke on income inequality. She said that 70% of her local cannot afford to live in the town they serve. Sound familiar?
Mike Yestramski told us about working at Western State Hospital up in Washington. This psychiatric hospital is known as the most dangerous worksite in the state. Mike had to fight management for basic PPE during the worst of the pandemic. He spoke for all public servants when he said “none of us signed up to be martyrs.”
President Lee Saunders spoke about the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike. He encouraged everyone to listen to the new podcast, The ‘I Am’ Story. https://iamstory.com/ The title refers to the signs reading “I Am a Man.” carried by Black Public Works employees in the AFSCME-led strike on the City of Memphis after two of their own were killed by a defective garbage compactor. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Memphis to support this strike when he was assassinated. The Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike is one of the most important moments in AFSCME history and our Convention paid tribute to Bill Lucy, one of the AFSCME leaders of the strike and the coiner of the “I Am a Man” slogan, who is nearing the age of 90. The Portland AFSCME regional office will be renamed in his honor.
A more light-hearted aspect of the convention was the small group of brave souls wearing inflated unicorn costumes. They were on hand to pay tribute to those locals with exceptionally high membership levels.
