The sixth episode of AFGE’s new series, The Activist, highlighting our union members who have stepped up to help make a difference in the lives of their colleagues and our government.
Joyce Howell is senior attorney at EPA Region 3 in Philadelphia and executive vice president of AFGE Council 238 representing EPA employees across the country.
Joyce has been working for the EPA in Philadelphia for 30 years. As an attorney, her job is important to her local community and the American public as she prosecutes and enforces environmental laws to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live on.
She has been an AFGE member for about 10 years since our union started organizing lawyers in Region 3. She believes that workers’ voice is stronger when everyone joins together.
“When we stand in solidarity, we represent the workers, and, in our case, I think we also represent our mission and help it survive political throughflow and keep our eyes on the mission and defend the workers,” she said.
Joyce is the chief negotiator of the council’s contract negotiation team, which has been in negotiation with the agency but has also hit a partial impasse over the council’s proposed diversity article to make the EPA a more inclusive agency as it plans to hire 1,800 employees in the next year.
Joyce is passionate about defending her colleagues and her agency’s mission. But there’s another thing she’s trying to defend through AFGE as well. Listen to her talk about what she’s defending and why she got involved in the union in the first place.
AFGE has scored a pair of victories in legal challenges over the Trump administration’s policy requiring federal job applicants to pledge their loyalty to the administration and attempts by DHS to dismantle FEMA by illegally slashing half of the agency’s workforce.
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Months of advocacy by AFGE and other veterans allies paid off last week when lawmakers achieved enough signatures to compel a vote in the U.S. House on legislation to ensure veterans receive all of the compensation they are owed for their military service.
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Members of Congress are joining AFGE and other national teachers unions in calling on the Trump administration to stop its unlawful dismantling of the Education Department.
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