AFT-Maryland staff and affiliate members journeyed to Wichita, Kansas, March 9-14 for a week of intensive training in the AFT organizing model and to help the Kansas Organization of State Employees (KOSE) identify potential activists and recruit new union members. The AFT-Maryland volunteers joined union members from Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, and Kansas in the joint organizing effort, which was launched as a part of the “Reclaiming the Promise of High Quality Public Services for Strong Communities,” an AFT national initiative."
AFT Secretary-Treasurer Lorretta Johnson launched the campaign by addressing the KOSE staff and volunteers. "We are seeing austerity budgets passed in state after state, cutting essential programs and services as well as the people who provide these services," Johnson said. "This is government on the cheap. This is not an approach to government that supports the common good." The Kansas legislature has reduced taxes for corporations and the wealthy while cutting and privatizing public services.
Targeting state workers for its union membership campaign, the KOSE members and volunteers conducted a dawn to dusk campaign that included visiting state workers in their homes and in their work places. Some 30 AFT affiliate members participated in the campaign effort, including Michael Spiller and Janelle Edmonds of AFT-Maryland, Lisa Citizen of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees (BCFPE) and Maxine Holmes of the City Union of Baltimore (CUB).
