Public Employees Federation
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| Full name | Public Employees Federation |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1978 |
| Members | 50,596 (2014) |
| Head union | Wayne Spence, president |
| Affiliation | AFT (AFL-CIO), SEIU (CtW) |
| Office location | Troy, New York |
| Country | United States |
| Website | www |
The Public Employees Federation (PEF) is an American union representing 54,000 professional, scientific, and technical public employees in the state of New York. The union is one of the largest local white-collar unions in the United States and is New York's second-largest state-employee union. PEF also represents employees who work in private-sector jobs and local government agencies. The union publishes The Communicator, a newsletter with a 2007 distribution of 70,000, on a monthly basis.
According to PEF's Department of Labor records, the union is composed of three categories of members: "administrative," "institutional," and "private/public sector." Of the total membership, these comprise around 69%, 28% and 3%, or 35,088, 14,065, and 1,443 members, respectively. The first two of these classifications cover two types of labor in "the Professional, Technical, and Scientific Titles [...] as designated by NYS and Civil Service." The third, smallest, portion covers several other employers. PEF contracts also cover some non-members, known as agency fee payers, which number comparatively about one twentieth of the size of the union's membership, or 2,790 non-members.
In 1971, 61-year-old George Hardy was elected president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Under Hardy, SEIU's health care and public employee divisions saw rapid growth. Much of the membership growth, however, came through affiliation rather than new member organizing. Hardy viewed the fast-growing American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) as SEIU's chief competitor. AFSCME had grown from a mere 100,000 members in 1951 to 500,000 members in 1972, and had elected a dynamic and aggressive new leader, 45-year-old Jerry Wurf, in 1964. Not only was AFSCME's growth substantial, its demographics matched those of SEIU's: At least two-thirds of the rival union's members were blue-collar workers, and a fifth of them worked in hospitals and nursing homes. To counter AFSCME's rapid growth, Hardy adopted a strategy of affiliating existing unions rather than organizing unorganized workers. Between 1971 and 1980, SEIU affiliated 22 independent unions. Merger and affiliation accounted for 230,000 new members from 1971 to 1985, and virtually all of the union's growth from 1980 to 1984.
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