From tornados to drinking water, public employees keep us safe
By Sarah LaFrenz
My family and I just spent the past hour in our basement due to a nasty storm about four miles north of us. We’re all fine. Tornados are a fact of life during spring and summer in Kansas.
Thinking about personal safety got me to thinking about how much we owe our federal, state, local and tribal employees for all the ways they keep us out of harm’s way. One of the things I’ve been pondering lately is how much public employees do — keeping the highways passable, keeping the water clean and guarding our state prisons, for just three examples — all those routine, almost invisible functions that everyone depends on.
Another remarkable characteristic of public employees is how we support one another. Part of that is belonging to a union community that works hard, plays hard and shows up for members in solidarity when they run into rough sledding. It’s why one of our union’s enduring slogans is: “We care. We fight. We show up.”
But a lot of showing up is in the nature of the services we provide. Our public employees who serve the mentally ill are highly empathic and attuned to slight changes in emotion and mood — and these skills are a boon to their co-workers.
Public employees show up for us, and the public shows up for them. We’re lucky to have these professionals who run the essential background services of our lives. Yet, we still don’t have enough workers to make up for the attrition of recent years. State employee vacancy numbers are increasing, and we need more colleagues.
This year during Public Service Recognition Week, May 5–11, let’s celebrate the public sector and let government employees know how much we appreciate them. We do interesting work that protects our democracy.
A fight for equity
It’s also not lost on me that the one place that makes for truly equitable treatment is the public sector. Public service hiring is fair. Labor unions help enforce this equity, always striving to make sure that everyone is paid the same wages for the same work and that the public sector reflects the communities we serve.
That’s why we as labor folks fight like hell for our workers, why we have that drive and fire. It’s because the work our people do is simply paramount to our society.
And speaking of fighting like hell, there’s a trend that AFT President Randi Weingarten has been talking about — how unions are building steam. Last month, Randi and some AFT members created a congratulatory video for members of the United Auto Workers in Chattanooga, Tenn., who voted to unionize. After the video went out on social media, our members quickly received a thank-you message from UAW President Shawn Fain.
“Something is going on in the country right now,” Randi said. “For the first time, an auto plant in the South just became union.” And since our last convention nearly two years ago, the AFT has organized 137 new units. We may hit 140 before our next convention this July.
Workers — especially younger ones who have gotten the short end of the stick since union density began declining in the 1980s — are beginning to realize that being in a union is the only way to have a voice on the job, to be properly paid, and to maintain decent benefits and a secure retirement. Although public service workers may be appreciated (or not), they should know without a shadow of a doubt that they have power with their union and that communities appreciate their work.
Over and over again, I’ve seen workers step up for one another and find solidarity with our union. There’s no real success if we don’t truly care for one another and our society — and that depth of caring transcends politics and culture.
Our union commitment to one another and the communities we serve ensures that we may get knocked down but we fight on and we win.
Sarah LaFrenz is president of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, based in Topeka. She began working for the state of Kansas about 20 years ago. She started working in water quality related to stream surveys in 2005 and became active in KOSE in 2012, having seen problems in her workplace and wanting to fix them. She became a steward, then KOSE board secretary in 2015 and KOSE president in 2017. Shining a light on what’s really happening in the workplace, she says, is the cornerstone of organized labor.
