Ohio Council 8 members joined more than 160 AFSCME members from around the country who gathered in Las Vegas last week to lift up the voice of public service workers and move our union forward. 

“No one is better than a union member to explain the benefits of joining and belonging to a union.  That’s why VMOs are so effective organizing new members and in internal organizing,” said AFSCME Ohio Council 8 Organizing Director Steve Roth.

Conference attendees participated in skill-building training sessions as well as gaining practical organizing experience. Leaving the classroom and hitting the streets, VMO’s knocked on the doors of Nevada state workers in anticipation of a pro-union administration by the state’s new Governor. 

For AFSCME Local 2191 Columbus Health Department President Jamie Shoemaker, the conference “was a great opportunity for information sharing and ways to make sure our union continues to grow. Our message was clear – joining a union is the best way to improve lives of all public employees – in Nevada and Ohio.”   

President Lee Saunders addressed the VMOs on the first day of the conference, telling them, “No matter the politician or the boss, it’s on us to grow this union and take care of our families and those we serve. And that’s why we are here. VMOs have a set of experiences and perspectives that cannot be replaced.”

In addition to Shoemaker, Council 8 members Kelly Bennett of Dayton, Keava McLoughlin of Columbus, Marilyn Fletcher, of Toledo, Quanna Murphy and Linda Wilson  of Cincinnati, Shawn Daum of Akron, and Tina Brown of Athens, attended the conference.

AFSCME Local 2191 President Jamie Shoemaker, first row left, joined by other O-H-I-O AFSCME members at the International Union’s Las Vegas VMO conference.

AFSCME Council 8 President John A. Lyall of Powell (Delaware Co.) has been appointed to the Industrial Commission Nominating Council by Governor John Kasich for a term beginning November 9, 2018, and ending October 20, 2022.

Biography

John A. Lyall has served as President of AFSCME Ohio Council 8 since 2007, and was unanimously elected to a third four-year term in 2015, at AFSCME Ohio Council 8’s 21st Biennial Convention.

President Lyall is a native of Cleveland and first joined AFSCME as a member in 1973,  when he went to work for the City of North Olmsted.  In 1979, he joined the Cleveland AFSCME staff.  He worked  as an assistant administrator with the Ohio AFSCME Care Plan, as an organizer, and staff representative.

John Lyall was appointed Cleveland Regional Director in 1991. In 1996, he was elected head of the Cleveland Federation of Labor AFL-CIO, now the North Shore Labor Council, and served as President until 1998.  In 1999, he moved to Columbus when he was appointed Council 8’s first Organizing Director, and in 2001, became the union’s First Vice President. 

He serves as an AFSCME International Vice President and serves as chairman of the AFSCME Ohio Council 8 Care Plan.

In addition, he serves as a vice president on the Ohio AFL-CIO Executive Board and is a member of the Ohio AFL-CIO Executive Committee.  Lyall is also a member of the State Executive Committee of the Ohio Democratic Party.

John Lyall graduated from Baldwin-Wallace College with honors and completed the Harvard University Trade Union Program. 

He has been married 28 years and has three children.

Members of AFSCME Local 3073 and the administration at the Belmont County Department of Jobs and Family Services got together for a little Halloween fun prior to starting this season’s joint community projects.

“AFSCME Local 3073 members and the Administration have a strong relationship that goes beyond the workplace, said Tracey Oates, an Ohio Council 8 Staff Representative in the Youngstown Region.   

Labor and management work together to serve their community just about every holiday. At back-to-school time, they provided students clothing and school supplies, and virtually all employees participate an annual food drive to make Thanksgiving better for the less fortunate, “and the list goes on,” Oates said.

Taking its name from the French for “beautiful mountain”, Belmont County, population 70,400, runs along a 40-mile stretch of the Ohio River on Ohio’s eastern state line with Pennsylvania.

AFSCME Ohio Council 8 stalwart Angela Caldwell joined members in the Cleveland Region and across the state for the third Ohio AFL-CIO Day of Action. Volunteers turned out to knock on doors and make calls to fired up union households and get them ready to go to the polls to elect Richard Cordray as Ohio Governor.

“I retired and then looked up to see things going so bad in this country and what we won with our blood, sweat and tears being taken away – it made me mad. I just couldn’t sit back and watch, my union roots wouldn’t let me,” she said.

A 20-year member of AFSCME Local 100, representing Cleveland city employees, she held many union offices including Union President. In 1993, she started a second career as an Ohio Council 8 staff representative in the Cleveland Region, retiring in 2011. She is currently an active member of AFSCME Retiree Chapter 1184.

Tuesday October 9th is the deadline for voter registration, “so we need to make sure people are ready and able to vote.  Labor has to lead the way like it always does,” Caldwell said.

She is now working with the Ohio AFL-CIO’s Cleveland office during the election.

Article published in the New York Times on August 25, 2018.

With John McCain, you never quite knew. That was a big part of his appeal, one of the things that made him interesting, and also one of the things that drove people who value ideological consistency a bit batty.

As a professed maverick, Mr. McCain, who died Saturday at the age of 81, was bound to make somebody unhappy. Though for much of his career his votes on the Senate floor were mostly along party lines, his periodic challenges to Republican orthodoxy made him more popular among independents, Democrats and the tattered remnants of his party’s moderate wing than with the absolutists in the party’s base. Five years of torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp appeared to have left him with a pretty good idea of who he was, an ability to think for himself and the capacity to tune out partisan noises.

He had principles, and he had flaws, from time to time betraying those principles — most grievously in the 2008 presidential campaign. But in a Senate mostly devoid of the kind of commanding figures who once roamed its halls, he was a rare bird. And he could surprise you.

Read the full article in the New York Times here.