AFSCME Members Rally to Recruit Workers for "A Career with Purpose and Freedom"
Touring towns and cities across the country, the AFSCME union is highlighting the shortage of workers in the public sector and promoting the many job opportunities that exist. To help spread the word, the AFSCME “Staff the Front Lines” bus rolled into Columbus last week and held a rally and press conference in conjunction with the AFSCME/OCSEA Convention. The bus tour is in response to the post-pandemic national shortage of public service workers — an issue felt in Columbus and throughout the state’s safety forces, school districts, hospitals, corrections facilities, among many other public sector areas.
The AFSCME tour is adopting a grassroots approach to help fill essential jobs in local and state markets along the tour route. Kicking off on July 17 in Rochester, New York, the bus tour is hosting job recruitment events in more than 20 cities across the country this summer, including Columbus.
“We have all become familiar with the term ‘essential workers’ that became so popular during the pandemic. But the truth is, you all were essential workers well before COVID came through our communities … so we say ‘Thank you,’” Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin said during the rally.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders, a Cleveland native, made sure to include his home state on the tour route to help make Ohioans aware of available public-sector union jobs, of which he said there are currently 970,000 nationwide.
President Saunders blames the vacancies partly on lingering pandemic disruptions to the workforce, but also on a general lack of knowledge about the good health, pension and other benefits these jobs come with.