I was shocked to learn this afternoon that Marty Beil, long-time leader of AFSCME Council 24, has passed away. I only met Marty once, when we interviewed him at the local AFSCME headquarters the day after he retired on June 30th. He spoke of his little granddaughter, how she had this bear of a man wrapped around her little finger, and how much he was planning to enjoy grandparenthood in his retirement.

I barely knew the guy, but I feel all choked up now. Not just because of the story about his granddaughter, but also because he cared so much about working people. It’s always interesting to meet people you only know as public figures. You can have strong opinions of people, feel sharply critical of their actions, yet when you meet them, you encounter another fallible human being like yourself, who is often doing what they think is best at the time, given the circumstances in which they find themselves.

So it was with Marty Beil. I questioned many of his actions and strategies during the Uprising in 2011 and still do. But interviewing him, I learned how much he really did care about working people. More than four years after the Uprising he was still passionate about the injustice done to Wisconsin state workers.

The focus during the protests was on teachers and other college-educated professionals. But Marty noted that AFSCME includes many blue collar workers. The average wage of workers in his union, he reported, was less than $15 an hour. So he was understandably outraged about to cuts to pensions and healthcare benefits, especially difficult for this set of workers.

Marty led AFSCME Council 24 for nearly 40 years, first as president and later as executive director. AFSCME was formed in Wisconsin in 1932 and it pained Marty that the last chapter of his career was marked by the decimation of his union.

Nevertheless, he had faith that we can rebuild. “The hope,” he said, “comes from all of us struggling together and trying to make a better future.” RIP, Marty.

(photo credit Leslie Peterson, Wisconsin State Journal)

In his book Strike Back (2014), labor lawyer Joe Burns notes that in the early 20th century, the AFL was reluctant to grant charters to police unions.  “Ambivalent about accepting police officers as members given their traditional role in busting strikes, the AFL initially rejected the police applications” (p18).  Following the Boston Police strike of 1919, however, the AFL decided to begin granting charters to police unions.

The recent high-profile spate of police shootings and the rise of the Black Lives Matter campaign has black labor organizers at the University of California calling on the AFL-CIO to reconsider, and in some cases terminate, its relationships with police unions.  Brandon Buchanan, a graduate student employee in the University of California system, helped to form the Black Interests Coordinating Committee and recently presented a letter calling on the AFL-CIO to end its affiliation with the International Union of Police Associations.

Historically and contemporarily, police unions serve the interests of police forces as an arm of the state, and not the interests of police as laborers,” the letter said. “Instead, their ‘unionization’ allows police to masquerade as members of the working-class and obfuscates their role in enforcing racism, capitalism, colonialism, and the oppression of the working-class.

The whole article, Black Labor Organizers Urge AFL-CIO to Reexamine Its Ties to the Police, is timely, thoughtful, and a great read.

Image courtesy of Alan Ginsberg

In his book about public sector unions, Strike Back (2014), labor lawyer Joe Burns notes that the upsurge of public union activity in the 1960s and ’70s began, in part, “with the organizing efforts of a handful of teachers in New York City” (p29).  At the beginning of the 1960s their salaries were so low that “a New York Times editorial asked why anyone would want to be a teacher when they could make more money working at a unionized car wash” (p29).  Their activism – including strikes – during those decades yielded great gains both in the terms and conditions of their work as well as their compensation.