AFSCME Members to Maryland Lawmakers: ‘Enough is Enough!’
January 19, 2011
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!’ – Members of AFSCME Maryland demonstrate outside the Statehouse in Annapolis to defend public pensions and health care benefits as the Legislature begins its 2011 session on Jan. 12. Photo Credit: Jeff Pittman
Approximately 150 members of AFSCME Maryland met with their state representatives in Annapolis on Jan. 12 – the first day of the legislative session – to send a clear message that the state’s budget should not be balanced on their backs.
“Everyone is talking about cutting our pensions and health care benefits, and we wanted to let them know it’s not acceptable to us,” says Greg Currie, a state corrections sergeant at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore and a shop steward at AFSCME Local 1427. “We earned those pensions. We worked hard for it, it’s ours and we’ve already been through furloughs. Enough is enough!”
Green AFSCME hats, scarves and shirts were prominent at the Statehouse steps as members prepared to fan out through the halls to meet personally with their representatives. Motivating their mission: recommendations by a pension sustainability commission that would – if adopted by lawmakers – require state workers to pay 3 percent more to keep the same pension benefit and double (to 10 years) the time required to become vested in their retirement program.
The panel also made drastic proposals to reduce health care benefits.
While the state faces an $18 billion unfunded liability for its pension program, AFSCME Maryland contends the answer is not to cut benefits but to restructure the system, which the state has intentionally underfunded for years.
For instance, union officials say the state could extend the time allowed to recover from pension losses caused by the state’s failure to keep the system actuarially sound, compounded by losses from the 2008 crash on Wall Street.
“We don’t want our pensions to be taken away from us or cut,” declares Moe Said, a direct care assistant at Springfield Hospital in Sykesville and president of Local 539. Said met with Baltimore County Del. Jon Cardin (D), who assured him “he would support state workers.” Currie, who spoke to Sen. Delores Goodwin Kelley (D), was not as reassured. “Her underlying theme seemed to be that pension cuts were almost inevitable.”
Still, the AFSCME members are determined to educate lawmakers and the public about the vital role that public employees serve, and that there are other ways to balance the state’s budget than through cuts in services, pensions and benefits.
“Why isn’t someone doing something about bringing jobs back from overseas, as opposed to cuts?” asks Currie.
Read more here, and send a message to Gov. Martin O’Malley urging him to “reject any recommendations of the Commission if they would cut employee or retiree benefits.”
