Madison County activist Karen Bright was recently presented CSEA’s PEOPLE Recruiter of the Year award. She was also PEOPLE Recruiter of the Month for October.
WAMPSVILLE — When Central Region activist Karen Bright found out she was the CSEA PEOPLE Recruiter of the Year, she saw it as a result of her hard work and a challenge for the future.
“Receiving the PEOPLE Award has challenged me to do even better, to not sit back and relax and say ‘oh, job well done,’ but to continue the fight and express even more so how important it is going forward today,” she said.
Bright, a child protective supervisor in the Madison County Department of Social Services, believes passionately that union members should invest in the PEOPLE Program to protect their rights. She had recruited more than 80 new PEOPLE members in the past year.
“I believe in the PEOPLE program with all of my heart,” she said. “If I’m not willing to stand up and fight for myself, who is going to stand up and fight for me? We as working men and women in this country should all be willing to stand up and fight for what’s right with job security, good wages, good benefits and retirement security. With this being one of the richest nations in the world, nobody should be afraid to retire because they don’t have a retirement benefit, or Social Security isn’t going to meet their needs. Those are the types of issues that PEOPLE helps fight for.”
So Bright, who recently became the Central Region’s PEOPLE Committee chair, spends a great deal of time convincing other members to join the program, which she says isn’t hard, because most workers understand its value.
“One of the secrets I have with recruitment for the PEOPLE Program is asking people ‘what if I told you that there was a program out there that only costs you $1.93 a week, and it fought to save your job, to help increase your wages, to save Social Security, to save Medicare, and to fight for good worker friendly legislation at the federal, state and local levels, and all you had to do was contribute (the money). Is that a program you would invest in?’ And the majority of people say ‘yes,’” she said.
When they do sign up, it gives Bright hope for the future.
“It’s nice to see people willing to stand up for themselves,” she said. “The future of union members being involved, especially politically, is probably one of the most important things facing us in this country today. I think that if we’re not willing to stand up and fight for ourselves, nobody’s going do that for us, so we need to unite and be involved. There is a lot at stake. Our livelihoods are at stake.”
Ultimately, Bright believes that union members must stick together.
I think it’s important that all union brothers and sisters come together and never quit – never quit on each other, never quit on CSEA, and never quit on this country and fighting for the middle class and help pulling those out of poverty into the middle class,” she said. “CSEA is a family, and you don’t quit on your family.”
— Mark M. Kotzin
For more information about the PEOPLE Program, visit cseany.org/PEOPLE.
