Watch Burnes Center Senior Fellow Seth Harris in discussion with Mike Sukal, AFSCME’s organizing and field services director, and three frontline volunteer member organizers as they discuss the role of volunteer member organizers, their experiences organizing through the pandemic, the future of organizing, and more.
The volunteer member organizer program at AFSCME engages its current members to help organize, retain, and recruit new members to the union. It is a particularly organized and structured strategy. For example, AFSCME convenes their members organizers to plan strategies for forthcoming campaigns and to engage in home visits and other organizing activities.
Mike Sukal is AFSCME’s organizing and field services director. He has held this position since 2012, and worked hard to bolster membership as a leader in the volunteer member organizing program.
Patricia Wright is a mental health technician in Nevada. She is a frontline leader who has worked with AFSCME and other unions to secure new collective bargaining legislation for Nevada state employees in 2019. She’s helped organize several bargaining units across the state and her union just negotiated their second contract with the state.
Adam Rizzo is the President of AFSCME Local 397, which represents workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Penn Museum, and the Please Touch Museum. He has been a museum educator at the PMA for more than 8 years.
Yolanda Irizarry is a police communications technician and a member of AFSCME’s Local 1549. She is working with her local to expand their organizing.
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