Public Employee Press

Meet the new Organizing Department

• Organize!
• Your point of view

DC 37 has set up a new Organizing Dept. with the hope of bringing union rights, pay and benefits to thousands of new workers every year by signing them up as members. “We have put together an energetic group who look forward to being on the frontline in the union’s mission of expanding its membership,” said Edgar deJesús, interim organizing director. Two of the three new organizers, Ramon Marrero and Nicole Laing, come from within the DC 37 family, as does the department’s secretary, Tavia Hartley.

Organizer Cristina Aguilera, a native of Venezuela, comes to DC 37 after working on organizing campaigns for Unite Here and the United Food and Commercial Workers.
While they come from disparate work backgrounds, the Organizing Dept. workers bring a common passion for social and economic justice to their new roles.

“People have the right to be treated fairly on the job,” said Marrero, who previously worked as a Clerk Typist II in the union’s Clerical Division. “I look forward to teaching people what we offer and what they can accomplish if they are organized.”

Laing, who earned a paralegal associate’sdegree at Berkeley College and attended the College of New Rochelle, worked as aLegal Assistant for 13 years in the DC 37 Legal Dept. “Through that work, I learned howimportant unions are,” she said. “I want to give back what I’ve benefited from and I want to increase the membership of DC 37 because we have so much to offer.”

“I’m really interested in the public sector, and I am fascinated by the opportunity to work with a large, powerful union like DC 37,” said Aguilera, who alternated time between the United States and Venezuela as she earned a business administration degree at the Universidad de Carabobo (where she participated in the student movement to protect university autonomy), and organized union members in New York City, Detroit, Phoenix, Ariz., and North Carolina.

Hartley, previously a Clerk Typist in DC 37’s Municipal Employee Legal Services plan, earned a double major in communications and journalism at St. John’s University. “I want to help non-members get the same privileges as union members by organizing,” she said.

From 1998 to 2006, deJesús headed theAFSCME council in Puerto Rico, where he worked on a historic multi-union organizing effort that won representation for more than 100,000 public employees. DeJesús also served as the New Jersey Area organizing director for DC 37’s national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Before AFSCME, deJesús spent 13 years with the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees. DeJesús represents AFSCME on the Labor Cuncil for Latin American Advancement’s executive board.

As a youth in El Barrio, deJesús worked with the Puerto Rican civil rights movement.