News

AFSCME President Lee Saunders praised the White House’s announcement Thursday that the Biden administration will forgive student loans for an additional 78,000 borrowers — including many AFSCME mem

AFSCME President Lee Saunders congratulated Nicole Berner, a longtime labor lawyer and general counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), on being 

Good evening AMEA Members! As you know, the AMEA election was last night, and our wonderful elections committee members worked tirelessly to ensure every member had the chance to exercise their democratic right to participate in our union.

 

Good evening AMEA members! Thank you everyone for your hard work attending meetings, talking with your coworkers, and exercising your right to vote.

70.34% of ballots cast were in approval of the proposed contract. 29.66% choose to reject the proposed contract. The contract stands approved and ratified by the AMEA membership, and will be forwarded for assembly approval. We will announce the dates of the assembly meetings regarding the contract as they are scheduled. 

In this year’s State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden highlighted his administration’s achievements over the past three years and vowed to continue fighting for working people.

AFSCME applauds his accomplishments and strongly supports the Biden-Harris administration’s vision for the future, which includes defending our nation’s democracy, protecting a woman’s right to choose and making the wealthy pay their fair share in taxes, among other things.

The public sector has finally recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of last year, there were 22,000 more public service jobs in the nation than in February 2020, just before the pandemic started.

This is cause for celebration for everyone in our communities, but especially for workers of color, who have been historically overrepresented in state and local government jobs.

Connecticut Rep. Jahana Hayes recently introduced a resolution calling on Congress to affirm its support for providing living wages, good benefits and fair working conditions to paraeducators, classroom assistants, bus drivers, custodial workers and others who are vital to our public education system.
AFSCME’s “I AM Story” podcast has received a nomination for an NAACP Image Award in the “Outstanding Podcast – Limited Series/Short Form” category.

Despite the growing wave of worker organizing across the country, the union membership rate last year ticked down slightly, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today, underscoring the importance of initiatives like AFSCME’s Staff the Front Lines to fill job vacancies in the public sector.