AFSCME represents more than 1.6 million public employees and health care workers and retirees throughout the United States. They include employees of state, county, and municipal governments, school districts, public and private hospitals, universities and non-profit agencies who work in a cross section of jobs ranging from blue collar to clerical, professional and paraprofessional. AFSCME is organized into more than 3,500 local unions, most of them affiliated with one of 60 district councils. Local unions and councils have their own constitutions, elect their own officers and administer a wide variety of local affairs. The International Union coordinates issues of concern to all AFSCME members and provides research, legislative, legal, organizational, educational, public relations and other services.

In Indiana and Kentucky, AFSCME Council 62 represents over 17,000 public and health care workers. The union’s membership is evenly divided between health and hospital employees, blue-collar workers and social service/counseling professionals. AFSCME Council 62 represents employees from Louisville, Kentucky to Gary, Indiana and in between. The union’s central office is in Indianapolis where state employees as well as those working for the City of Indianapolis, Indianapolis Public Schools, Wishard Hospital, IUPUI, and Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library to name a few are all represented by AFSCME Council 62. Throughout the two states the union represents employees in over seventy-six state, county, municipal, school, and health care jurisdictions.

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AFSCME Council 62 has over 80 affiliated local unions in Indiana and Kentucky. AFSCME Council 62 was chartered in Indianapolis, IN on June 15, 1963. The union’s Executive Board and Director are elected by convention every four years. Each local union elects its own officers and sets its own dues rate and all full dues paying members have a right to attend meetings and vote on all local activities – including their contracts.

HISTORY- AFSCME began as a number of separate locals organized by a group of Wisconsin state employees in the early 1930’s. By 1935 there were 30 locals which became a separate department within the American Federation of Government Employees. In 1936, AFSCME was chartered by the American Federation of Labor. By 1955, at the time of the AFL-CIO merger, AFSCME had 100,000 members. The following year, the Union merged with the 30,000-member CIO Government and Civic Employees Organizing Committee. In 1957, AFSCME moved its headquarters from Madison, Wisconsin to Washington, D.C. Recent organizing successes, including Indiana’s state employees, have brought the union’s membership past the 1.3 million mark.