On the Campaign Front LinesPhyllis Hancock
CWA Local 3108
Politics Affects Your Life
Two of the biggest reasons Phyllis Hancock is involved in political action this year are her sister and her mother.
Hancock, a facility assignment specialist for Bell South in Orlando and a member of Communications Workers of America Local 3108 for more than 30 years, is concerned about health care—not so much for herself, because her union has won high-quality health care insurance at Bell South, but for people she's close to who aren't in unions.
That includes her sister. "She got laid off and she's going to college full-time to build up her skills," Hancock notes. "That means she doesn't have health insurance. She's had to go to the emergency room because she can't afford to get regular medical care. It's ridiculous in a country as rich as ours that some people don't have health insurance."
Hancock's mother is luckier: She is retired and covered by Medicare. "It's not stressing her out right now, but as time goes on, I'm afraid she's going to fall in that 'donut hole' where she'll have to pay a lot out of pocket for her prescriptions. For someone on a fixed income, that can affect them." Hancock is referring to new Bush administration rules covering Medicare Part D, passed by Congress in 2003, in which annual prescription expenses between $2,251 and $5,100 are not covered. This nearly $3,000 gap has been dubbed the . The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates as many as 6.9 million seniors could fall through the donut hole.
There are other issues in the election Hancock is concerned about, such as education. "Here in Florida, too many of these kids are dropping out of school," she says. "The dropout rate is so bad and our education level is so bad in the state that they can't get industry to move here, because people in those companies don't want to put their kids in our schools. It's broken. That's one thing that happens when you're dealing with both Bushes at the same time, the president and the governor."
Hancock's first political activity was phone banking in Florida's gubernatorial race four years ago. "I got the political bug," she recalls. In 2003, she became president of her local chapter of the AFL-CIO constituency group, the A. Philip Randolph Institute (), where she started a year-round program focused mainly on education; and this year, she's volunteered as the Labor 2006 coordinator for the Central Florida AFL-CIO.
Already this year, Hancock has taken part in community walks, where she and other activists in APRI, the —also an AFL-CIO constituency group—and the Florida Voters League (a local community group) distributed information on voting rights and Florida's schedule for early voting. She plans to phone bank and leaflet union members about the election. On Election Day, she and other members of her APRI chapter will each adopt a precinct to make sure everything goes as it should at the polls.
Hancock believes that union members and political action go together. "Politics affects your life," she observes. "Practical things relate to politics. They're a part of politics. It's important for you to vote so things go more your way."
