U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown met with Ohio leaders after more than 50 twisters rampaged across the state on the night of May 28. The storms, damaged property, and caused at least 130 injuries and one death.

While in Dayton Brown met with AFSCME 101 union leaders and Mayor Nan Whaley to assess the damage to the city’s water treatment plant that knocked out water service to thousands. In addition, some 80,000 area residents were without electricity.

“Senator Sherrod Brown and Mayor Nan Whaley came to our water plant today,” said AFSCME Local 101 President Ann Sulfridge. “With their leadership and the amazing dedication of our AFSCME Local 101 members working around the clock, we are recovering from the damage to our neighborhoods. Our community spirit is second to none. Proving, once again, we are stronger together,” she said.

All water and electricity services are expected to be  restored today.

-30- 

Left to right: U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, AFSCME Local 101 President Ann Sufridge and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley. (Photo by Tom Ritchie Sr.)

Cleveland labor and political activist Lynnie Powell was presented with the 2019 Honorary Certificate of Applied Politics by The University of Akron’s prestigious Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics.

For more than 50 years Lynnie Powell has been a political icon in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and Ohio Democratic Politics. Since 2004, she has been the Regional Political Director for the Ohio Democratic party and was Deputy Director of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections for 13 years.

“As the former, long-time Vice President of AFSCME Local 100, the union representing City of Cleveland employees, Lynnie has never forgotten her labor roots. She has always focused on ways to make politics work for workers. This recognition is richly deserved,” said AFSCME Ohio Council 8 President John A. Lyall.

Over the course of her career Lynnie Powell has been advisor to U.S. Rep. Lou Stokes, his brother Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city, Cleveland City Council President George Forbes and countless others.

Powell served as Regional Political Director for the Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.  In addition, she is also the former Executive Director for the Black Elected Democrats of Cleveland.

Lynnie has four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren. She is a master gardener and each year plants a community garden and always gives away the fall’s harvest.   

The University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics is a bipartisan research and teaching institute dedicated to increasing understanding of the political process with special emphasis on political parties, grassroots activity and ethical behavior. 

It is with great pleasure we announce that AFSCME’s own  Pierrette “Petee” Talley, was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ohio Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI).

“This is a well-deserved recognition of her life-long career as a union activist. Beginning as an AFSCME Ohio Council 8 staffer in 1980, she rose to one of the highest offices of Ohio’s state federation of labor,” said Ohio Council 8 Field Services Director Marcia Knox, who introduced Talley at the APRI awards ceremony held in Dayton.

“Petee Talley has always been a dedicated trade unionist who has been described as “a Rosa Parks of the Ohio labor movement,” Knox said.

She has held several positions with AFSCME including working as the union’s political and legislative director in Michigan from 1994 to 1999.

In 1999, the national AFL-CIO appointed Petee to the position of Ohio Director of Field Mobilization. In that capacity she was responsible for directing and implementing programs that engaged union affiliates and activists around political, organizing and legislative activities and working with the state’s central labor councils.

Talley was elected as Ohio AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer in 2002 and retired in 2019. She succeeded Donald K. Day, the first African-American and first  public employee to hold the position.  She is the first woman to hold that position.

In January she was honored with the “World Peace Prize — Roving Ambassador for Peace” by the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus.

Founded in 1965, the  A. Philip Randolph Institute (www.apri.org/) is an organization committed to the fight for racial equality and economic justice. Today, APRI is led by President Clayola Brown, whose vision and energy has sparked a new beginning for the organization and for the movement as a whole.

Left to right, AFSCME Ohio Council 8 Dayton Regional Director Stacey Benson Taylor, Petee Talley, Ohio Council 8 Field Services Director Marcia Knox, and Dayton Miami Valley AFL-CIO Executive Director Dianne Walsh.

AFSCME Local 3360 won a benchmark contract at Cleveland’s MetroHealth Hospital that increased wages, improved benefits and took a giant step toward a living wage for the union’s lowest paid members.

Overwhelmingly approved by union members, the contract includes a 6.5 percent across-the-board wage increase over the life of the three-year agreement. In addition, the union won a ground-breaking provision that established a $15 per hour minimum wage.

According to Julie Albers, president of the 2,000-member union, the move affected nearly 800 hospital employees including some 300 workers whose pay jumped by three dollars per hour.

“This was a huge gain that will improve the lives of our members and allow us to retain and attract the kind of people that make our hospital great,” Albers said.

In addition, the union made significant progress on health care benefits which will cover 100 percent of costs starting in the second year of the contract. Under the plan there will be no deductibles or co-pays at the doctor’s office, everything will be covered.

“There will be a cost increase, but the savings our members will receive will more than make up for that,” said Cleveland Regional Director Mark Davis.

“We also got a wellness program in the contract that includes a significant premium offset for those who participate, so the cost will be minimal,” he said.

MetroHealth is a public hospital serving the 1.2 million residents of Cuyahoga County Ohio where employees have been represented by AFSCME Local 3360 for 35 years.   

The AFSCME Local 3360 leadership team negotiated a bench mark contract with Cleveland’s MetroHealth hospital
that included a $15 minimum wage provision.

The AFSCME Ohio Council 8 Family Scholarship committee is pleased to announce this year’s four-year, $2,500 per year women’s scholarship is named in honor of Carolyn Jackson, and this year’s men’s scholarship honors Donald K. Day.

Carolyn Jackson began her 20-year AFSCME career in 1978, when she was hired as office secretary for the Columbus headquarters office of Ohio’s newly united Public Employee Councils that we now know as AFSCME Ohio Council 8.

As her responsibilities grew, she was promoted to Administrative Assistant to Ohio Council 8 President Robert Brindza. Through the 1980s until she retired in 1998, Jackson played an important part in the union’s growth reliably coordinating and maintaining records and dependably providing administrative support.

Prior to joining AFSCME, she had a 15-year career as a secretary, working first for Batelle Memorial Institute and then as a legal secretary at a private legal firm.

     Jackson lives in Columbus Ohio and is still active in her church and community.

  Donald K. Day started his 32-year labor career as a member, and later became president, of AFSCME Local 1746, which represents Cuyahoga County employees, while working as a probation officer. In 1970, he joined AFSCME’s staff as director of the Cleveland-based Hospital Career Development Program. A year later, he became Assistant Director of AFSCME’s political legislative program in Columbus.

    In 1978, with the creation of AFSCME Ohio Council 8 which unified the state’s multiple public employee regional councils, Day was elected First Vice President and served Council 8 for nine years.

     During this time Day also served on the Executive Board of the Ohio AFL-CIO. In 1987, he left AFSCME after being elected the Ohio AFL-CIO’s Secretary Treasurer, a position he held until his death in 2002.  He was the first public employee to hold that position.      

     Day was active in civic and community organizations, including the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Columbus Urban League, NAACP, and served on the Franklin County Mental Health board and the Executive Committee of the Ohio Democratic Party.

    Before his career in the labor movement, he served in the U.S. Army, was a city firefighter and taught in the Cleveland Public School System.

     Ohio Council 8 First Vice President Harold Mitchell, chair of the executive board’s scholarship committee, encourages all eligible students to apply for the $2,500 per year, four-year scholarships. In addition to Mitchell, the scholarship committee includes Ohio Council 8 Cleveland Regional Vice President Julie Albers, Ohio Council8 Athens Regional Vice President David Logan, and Trustee Kim Gaines.

Eligibility Requirements:

An applicant’s parent must be an AFSCME Ohio Council 8 affiliated local union member who has been in good standing for at least one (1) calendar year prior to May 1, 2019.

  In addition, an applicant must graduate from high school in the year in which application for the scholarship is made and must attend a four (4) year accredited college or university as a full-time student.

   Full details are included in the official application brochure which is can be downloaded at afscmecouncil8.org and is also available at all Ohio Council 8 regional offices.

  Applications must be postmarked no later than Wednesday, May 1,2019. Applications which are  incomplete, or which are postmarked after the specified date, will be ineligible for consideration. Winners will be announced by June 30, 2019.

Learn more.