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Council 57 members will have an opportunity to elect a new Executive Board at the upcoming April Delegates meeting.

Nominations for all open board positions closed on March 29. Officer elections will take place by secret ballot at the regularly scheduled 10am Delegate meeting on Saturday, April 27, at the Council 57 Oakland Office, located at 80 Swan Way, Suite 104/105.

The following are the nominations:

In the 1980s, I was living and going to school in Minnesota when women who worked for state government won a big victory. They got the state to increase the pay of women in “female dominated jobs” by passing a pay equity bill. In other words, they put a dent in the gender pay gap. As a student, I researched and wrote about the process of crafting, passing and implementing that legislation. And I learned something that I have never forgotten: the union made it happen. And not just any union. Our union: AFSCME. 

Our union gained more than 9,000 dues-paying members and nearly 19,000 dues-paying retirees in the last year, suggesting that billionaires and corporations are failing in their effort to “defund and defang” public service unions.

After months of negotiations, stalled talks and a two-day strike, the members of AFSCME Local 829’s Human Services Agency unit won a new contract this month and brought about a number of changes that will make working conditions better in San Mateo County.

Valley State Prison is in Chowchilla, California, about 40 miles outside Fresno. It’s here that Anthony Ngo, an AFSCME Local 2620 (Council 57) member, commutes every day, providing psychological counseling and group therapy to the medium security facility’s inmates.

“It’s a great job – great pay and benefits, and I love the staff, and I have a flexible work schedule,” says Ngo. “I also like the work I do.”

Workers in Missouri and New Mexico have chalked important victories against anti-worker laws that would have robbed them of their voices and the right to bargain collectively.

In Missouri, two separate anti-worker measures, HB 1413 and SB 1007, were halted by state courts last week.