New leadership at AFSCME #88
AFSCME Local 88 installed new
top officers Nov. 20. Deirdre Mahoney-
Clark, a budget analyst for Multnomah
County, replaced Michael Hanna as Lo-
cal 88 president. And senior IT special-
ist Jason Heilbrun replaced Mahoney-
Clark as vice president. Both ran
unopposed.
Local 88 represents 3,000 workers at
Multnomah County and three nonprof-
its — Transition Projects, Central City
Concern and American Friends Service
Committee.
Early priorities for Mahoney-Clark
and Heilbrun will be dictated by the cal-
endar:
• The union will need to decide
whether and who to endorse for Mult-
nomah County chair and Multnomah
County Board of Commissioners in the
May 20, 2014, primary. The union has
already endorsed Loretta Smith for re-
election, as well as sheriff Dan Staton
and county auditor Steve March. In Lo-
cal 88, the vice president also chairs the
political action committee. Heilbrun
said Local 88 expects to make endorse-
ments in January and February.
• Local 88 will also be renegotiating
the three-year contract covering Mult-
nomah County employees, which ex-
pires June 30, 2014. In contract bar-
gaining, Mahoney-Clark said keeping
affordable health care is members’
Number 1 priority. The county is evalu-
ating whether it makes more sense to
join a statewide insurance pool or to re-
main self-insured.
Mahoney-Clark, 54, says she didn’t
know about unions when she went to
work at Multnomah County in 1996.
Mahoney-Clark was born in Tucson,
Arizona, and grew up in Milwaukie,
Oregon. Her father, a U.S. Air Force
veteran, worked for the Oregon Em-
ployment Department, and always en-
couraged her to seek jobs that weren’t
traditional for women. She worked in
construction pouring cement, as a land-
scaper and treeplanter, at shops fabri-
cating items out of plywood and acrylic,
and at a Lake Oswego hardware store.
Over the years, she learned to stick up
for herself at work.
At the county, she learned to stick up
for others. Unafraid to question man-
agers, she was approached several times
to become a steward. But though she
poked her head into a few union meet-
ings when union dues were raised, Ma-
honey-Clark didn’t get charged up
about the union until she attended a Lo-
cal 88 holiday party and met other
members who were engaged. She cites
the 2005 election of Local 88 president
Becky Steward as her personal turning
point; Steward recruited her to become
more active, and Mahoney-Clark went
on to serve as chief steward, Executive
Board member and vice president.
“I’m a person who believes in speak-
ing up when I see something that I don’t
feel is right,” Mahoney-Clark told the
Labor Press. “I don’t believe there
should be fear in the workplace. I be-
lieve the union can help people see the
power they have.”
Now, as president, she’ll lead Ore-
gon AFSCME’s second-largest local.
Besides contract bargaining and the
County election, Mahoney-Clark plans
to help pass an Oregon ballot initiative
legalizing same-sex marriage, and will
work to oppose an anti-union ballot ini-
tiative aimed at public employees. She’s
also a supporter of Health Care for All
Oregon, a coalition pushing for the cre-
ation of a universal health care system
in Oregon; Local 88 is one of eight AF-
SCME locals and more than 20 unions
that are members of the coalition.
“I want to make a difference in what
goes on in our county, state, and coun-
try,” Mahoney-Clark said. “The main
reason I’m an activist is because I’m a
patriot. I believe a strong working class
makes America great.”
On the whole in recent years, Local
88 has enjoyed a fairly positive rela-
tionship with the county as an em-
ployer. Hanna, the outgoing president,
describes the relationship as collabora-
Newly-installed AFSCME Local 88 officers Deirdre Mahoney-Clark,
president, and Jason Heilbrun, vice president.
tive and focused on problem-solving.
Local 88 has partnered with the county
on issues like controlling health care
costs.
Hanna, 42, is one of the founders of
AFSCME’s Next Wave program, which
encourages young members to get in-
volved and has been copied nationally
by the union.
“I wanted to walk my talk,” Hanna
said, “to step down and let others step
up.”
Thus Hanna chose not to seek re-
election, and returned full-time to his
job maintaining county databases —
from the library catalog to jail records
and animal control.
During his two two-year terms,
Hanna helped bargain a new three-year
contract in 2011, and helped pass a
stand-alone library funding district that
will ensure budget stability for the
Multnomah County Library.
Hanna, a database administrator for
the County, also helped modernize AF-
SCME. He saw to it that Local 88 con-
tracts dating back to 1968 were scanned
and digitized, and began digitizing
union meeting minutes starting in 1930.
He also hired programmers to write a
smart phone app for Oregon AFSCME.
And he led a county task force that
crafted a policy under which employees
could opt for alternatives to the tradi-
tional 9 to 5 schedule. The policy will
get a test-run from January to June
2014.
Hanna will remain active in the
union, and will continue to serve as
chief steward and as a member of the
county’s employee benefits advisory
team. He’ll also serve through April
2015 as first vice president of Oregon
AFSCME. And he’ll serve on the Local
88 Executive Board.
Heilbrun, 44, served two years on
the Local 88 Executive Board before
running for vice president. He worked
for more than two decades doing IT for
companies like Nationwide Insurance
and Nike, but says he really found his
home in public sector work when he
went to work for the County in 2009.
Aside from political work, he wants to
improve AFSCME’s use of social me-
dia to help members get more engaged.
Local 88 elected other officers be-
sides president and vice president:
Jeanne Ramsten, treasurer; Korie Er-
ickson, secretary; Nellie Stearns,
trustee; and Executive Board members
Gregory Franklyn (Transition Projects
Inc.), John Talbott (Central City Con-
cern), Madolyn Frazier, Andres Avila,
Matt Davis, Diana Grob, and Julia Por-
ras (Public Safety Sector), and Michael
Hanna, Kristin Wray, Tom Newsom,
and Bruce Jenks (General Government
and Library Sector). Trustee has a three-
year term; all others are two-year terms.
Local 88 will hold a holiday party
Dec. 18 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at
Oregon AFSCME’s Portland of-
fice.
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