A talk with AFSCME Council 4's Lois O'Connor

By Joelle Fishman

NEW HAVEN - When the president of Connecticut's largest union receives the AFL-CIO Leadership Award during the state labor convention this week, it will mean a lot to thousands of workers.

That's because Lois O'Connor has dedicated her life to improving the wages, working conditions and quality of life for all working people.

If there's a strike picket line, or protest action, a trip to the capitol or an organizing conference, you can count on Lois being there.

In an interview with the World, O'Connor recalled how, as a young child, she learned the ideals of compassion and equality from her mother. Later, as a mother of eight herself, O'Connor carried on these family traditions.

"If you've had a good life, if you get to have all of the benefits with family and security, why wouldn't you want this for everyone else?" she asked.

Two years ago, O'Connor was elected president of AFSCME Council 4 on a reform slate. The union represents 32,000 state workers. For many years she served as president of Local 478 representing 700 clerical workers at 27 state agencies in south central Connecticut.

She said her life is dedicated to the labor movement because "unions stand up for the working people ... Labor unions set the wages for those unorganized as well as those organized."

But she is far from satisfied with the many accomplishments over the years.

"I am appalled that in some private companies, they can just say you're fired and you're out," she said.

"You have a right to organize into a union in the place where you work, and you should not be fired or disciplined as a result of that. This is a struggle for our civil rights."

She counts among the biggest accomplishments winning pay equity for state employees, necessary because the jobs of the women workers were classified in low-pay categories.

O'Connor remembers the first hearing in 1977. Waterbury union leader Sylvia Terrell, who died recently, was her inspiration. O'Connor was one of the union representatives who served on the study committee which developed the benchmarks for implementation.

"The pay equity agreement we achieved in Connecticut is one of the most complete in the country in terms of who is included, and because no one had a salary demotion ... We found that African American men as well as all women benefited."

O'Connor, an officer of the Greater New haven Labor Council, is encouraged by the developments in the labor movement of the last few years.

But, she said, there is still not enough involvement with the community. As a local union president, "contributing to the community, where our members lived and needed services," was always high on her agenda.

"Too many of us do not extend ourselves into the community. That, I hope, will be my legacy. That we tried to do as much as we could in the community."

One project that stands out as a highlight is a youth program at the Church Street South housing development in New Haven. "We arranged to have bus trips for the children and we worked with the mothers."

At the present, a big concern is that every person, especially in the cities, gets counted in the census.

"Change only comes with the ballot box," O'Connor said, reflecting on the national AFL-CIO campaign to elect 2,000 labor activists to public office.

She also stressed the importance of education about labor history and the history of African Americans.

"This is one of the things I would like to do now that I am really retiring."

In 1991, as a union leader long active in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa, O'Connor co-chaired a major event with Chris Hani of the South African Communist Party sponsored by the People's Weekly World Connecticut Bureau.

Last year, upon election to AFSCME Council 4 leadership, she and Executive Director Michael Ferrucci accepted the People's Weekly World Newsmaker Award on behalf of their union.

This year, O'Connor served as presenter of the Newsmaker Awards during the annual Peoples' Weekly World May Day rally.

Perhaps what distinguishes Lois O'Connor is her understanding that an injury to one is an injury to all, backed up by her consistent and principled stands over the years on all the major issues of the day including civil rights, peace and economic justice.