DPE President Paul E. Almeida presents to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Professional and technical people are today the fastest growing occupational groups in our nation. Their explosive growth over the past two decades has brought into sharp focus a host of work and life challenges. Every day these hard-working individuals face a lack of respect on the job, challenges to professional integrity and other obstacles to doing their work right, excessive hours of work, inadequate pension, health care and other benefits; insufficient time for family commitments, and job insecurity. Millions of professionals have determined that the way to effectively engage their employers in a meaningful dialogue about these matters is through union representation.
The Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO (DPE) is a coalition of 21 national unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO that represent over four million highly skilled, professional and technical workers. They include professionals from over three hundred occupations — teachers and techies, screen actors and broadcasters, writers and journalists, engineers and scientists, nurses and therapists, musicians, judges, and many more. These union members helped build and design the space station, led breakthroughs in medical science and discovered new disease-fighting drugs, among other accomplishments. They educate tomorrow’s workers in today’s classrooms, and care for the health of our nation. They have won Academy Awards, Grammys, Emmys, Pulitzer and Nobel prizes, and been recognized for the highest achievement in their respective professions.
On their behalf, and in concert with their unions, DPE is tasked with several major responsibilities including: the advancement of a public policy agenda that enhances the economic security, well-being and professional status of these workers; educating the public about the prominent role of union professionals in our nation and the labor movement; providing research, education, training, and other assistance that supports the organizing, collective bargaining, and servicing objectives of DPE member unions; promoting the unionization of professional and technical people and assisting the efforts of DPE affiliates to organize and represent these employees; and building alliances with non-union associations and societies that also promote the interests of professionals.
If you are without a strong voice you are indeed powerless in today’s workplace. If you are one of the many professional and technical people who face seemingly insurmountable pressures or simply want a better life at work, I invite you to explore representation with one of the many unions of the Department for Professional Employees. Their websites are easily accessible through our own. In the meantime, thanks for stopping by, and take some time to see what DPE is doing on behalf of our nation’s professionals.
— Paul E. Almeida