Heart of the movement / Guillermo Perez, AFSCME

AFL-CIO.

After Guillermo Perez graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983, the last thing on his mind was working for a union. But he soon found out the Reagan recession had shut down any job opportunities. "That was the first time I had lived hand-to-mouth, and it radicalized me," he says.

After getting a job as a producer at an independent TV station in Chicago, he met labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan, author of Which Side Are You On?, who introduced him to some retired Steelworkers fighting for their pensions. After that experience, "I was hooked on the labor movement," he says.

Today at age 40, he wears several union hats. Besides working as an education and training specialist with the Civil Service Employees Association, AFSCME Local 1000, in Albany, N.Y., he also is treasurer of the Albany chapter of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), which was formed less than two years ago.

Perez, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Cuba in 1960, focuses a lot of his attention on raising the standard of living for Latinos, especially undocumented immigrants. Living and working in Albany for only the past two-and-a-half years, he has become a busy activist. Recently, he helped spearhead an effort by the Albany LCLAA chapter-which has just 25 members-that contributed 800 signed cards for SEIU's campaign to deliver 1 million postcards to Congress supporting reform of the nation's immigration laws.

With his local headquartered in the state capital, Perez has access to state policymakers and he has developed and conducted workshops for state legislators on the high mortality rates among Latino workers-many of whom take jobs no one else wants and who are exposed to hazardous conditions. Last year he joined a fast by unions and faith-based groups in support of immigrant workers' rights.

Now he is working as a LCLAA activist helping organize mainly Latino farm workers in New York State. "Agriculture is a big industry in New York and most of these workers are undocumented and they get exploited every day," he says. "This is the same struggle César Chávez had in California, except now it's 2003." In April, Perez plans to participate in a 150-mile walk from New York City to Albany to demand better working conditions for the immigrant farm workers.

Perez brings a wide range of skills to his struggle for immigrant workers. After he met Geoghegan, he entered law school at night to become a labor lawyer. It took four years, but he earned his law degree and went to work for a union law firm in Milwaukee. "I practiced seven months and then I had had enough," he says. He quit the law firm and "talked my way" into the AFL-CIO's Organizing Institute (OI). "They didn't want to take me. They said I couldn't be an organizer. But I convinced them I could."

After completing his OI training, Perez worked as an organizer for SEIU for almost three years before taking the job at CSEA. In his latest role as a union educator, he completed a weeklong bilingual training course in February at the George Meany Center for Labor Studies on workplace safety and health. "There is a desperate need for bilingual trainers to discuss health and safety issues with immigrant workers," he says. "Many of them don't speak English and they don't understand the signs posted in the workplace and they are afraid to speak up because they don't know their rights to a safe workplace." Perez currently conducts bilingual safety training for all unions in the area through a partnership with the Capital District Area Labor Federation in Albany.

No matter what job he has, Perez says he is driven by a strong commitment to his community and his sense of justice. "Latinos come from everywhere, but we are treated as one community here in the United States. If I had lived in slavery times, I would have been an abolitionist, running the underground railroad. Immigrants are living in slavery today and I don't see any way the union movement can't be involved with undocumented workers."

Copyright © 2003 AFL-CIO