Our History

Until the late 1960s, public service employees in Pennsylvania worked under the “patronage” system – they were hired and fired at the will of their political employers. Gerald McEntee, now the President of AFSCME International, was then a young AFSCME staff member in Philadelphia. McEntee dreamed of a better life for public employees, and he embarked upon the largest organizing drive in American labor history.

From a cramped, one-room office in Philadelphia, McEntee worked with a small staff including Pat Salvatore, Buck Martin, and Edward Keller, who would later become the Executive Director of Council 13. Together, the team organized tens of thousands of Pennsylvania’s state employees, as well as thousands of municipal, county, township, borough, and school district employees.