History of District Council 36

District Councils are created to pool resources to provide service to the locals, that they couldn’t afford on their own. AFSCME Locals tend to be smaller than the mega-locals of some of the other public employee unions, giving AFSCME members a greater voice in their local’s affairs.

District Council 36 was chartered by the AFSCME International in 1970 after two less than successful attempts to get the AFSCME locals to work more closely together. In 1949 District Council 20 was created but was ineffective. So in the early 1960’s it was merged into Council 49, a statewide District Council. The Council had two offices, one in Oakland and one in LA. This proved to be unworkable, and the Council was dissolved in November 1969.

AFSCME Local 685, the County probation officers were the largest local in the new Council with about 1000 members. Local 685, was founded in 1945 by a group of World War II veterans who sought to create an outstanding Probation Department for Los Angeles County. The new Union was granted a charter by AFSCME. In 1969, under the strong leadership of John Seferian and Henry Fiering, the union won an election that made Local 685 the recognized certified majority representative of all employees in the County Probation Series and, later on, in the Detention Series.

Other charter members were Local 119, County Mechanics, The County Social Workers Local 1117, Torrance Municipal Employees, and Local 800 representing Jewish community social service providers.

Henry Fiering, and John Seferian, also played a leadership role in the formation of the District council. Henry became the first Council director and John its first president the first President,  John Rainwater and John Correa representing Water and Power, Maurice McFadden from the County Mechanics. Julie Fasow and Ida Fiering (Henry’s wife) from the Jewish Federation, Ann Gianni from the Librarians, Thelma Jackson from UCLA Herschel Alexander from the poverty workers.

Local 3090, the Los Angeles All City Employees Association affiliated in1979 after working closely with then AFSCME District Director Vern Watkins. Their bargaining units included Clericals, white collar supervisors, port pilots and the medical professional employees. The local had about 2000 members becoming the largest local in the District Council. Early leaders included Gloria Laroquette, Betty Ballard and Lucy Torres. They immediately successful in winning a 10% salary increase. 1n 1984 they pushed for a pay equity study which examined the salary differential between female dominated job classifications and comparable jobs predominately held by men. This resulted in the first pay equity raises in the country.