Anthony Wells

SSEU 371

President

Anthony Wells was elected President of SSEU Local 371 in 2011, after more than two decades working in every aspect of the union’s activities, from organizing to bargaining to pensions to research. Its 20,000 members include  New York City social service workers in every mayoral agency. 

Anthony Wells began his civil service career in 1980 as a caseworker at the Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx.  He transferred to the Bureau of Child Welfare (BCW) Queens Field Office three years later, where he served as a union delegate. In 1988 he joined the union staff as an organizer, becoming Associate Director of Organization in  1990 and Associate Director of Negotiations and Research in 1995. In 1999 he became Vice-President for the  Negotiations and Research section, heading the union’s bargaining committee and representing SSEU Local  371 on the DC37 Pension Committee until he was elected President. 

He is incredibly proud of his efforts on behalf of city workers facing oppressive conditions or firings. In 2002 he won a standard 35-hour workweek for “house parents’ in group homes, who had been compelled to work a 60-hour workweek. More recently, when the city abruptly fired eighteen members of the 311  call center staff, he led the fight that resulted in an arbitrator’s ruling that the city was obligated to “discuss the  layoffs with the union and to explore feasible alternatives.” As a result, all eighteen workers were reinstated with full back pay. He fights for layoff prevention, job security, benefits protection, and maintaining a level playing field through the civil service system.