AFSCME

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the second- or third-largest labor union in the United States and one of the fastest-growing, representing over 1.4 million government employees. (Employees at the federal level are represented by other unions, specifically the American Federation of Government Employees.)

AFSCE was founded in 1932 as the Wisconsin State Administrative, Clerical, Fiscal and Technical Employees Association (quickly becoming the Wisconsin State Employees Association) amid fears of the possible elimination of the civil service and a return to patronage jobs. Its driving force and first president was Arnold Zander.

In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis, Tennessee to support a strike by the black sanitation workers' union, AFSCME Local 1733.

President Gerald McEntee is the chair of the AFL-CIO Political Education Committee and an influential political player in the Democratic Party. The union was one of only three to endorse Howard Dean in the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, a joint endorsement it made with the rival Service Employees International Union.