Workers Rally on Capitol Hill for “Jobs, Not Cuts”
by Pablo Ros | February 12, 2013
AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders today joined workers from across the country at a rally on Capitol Hill, demanding that Congress close loopholes for Wall Street and business moguls and make no cuts to the programs that working families rely on, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“Jobs, not cuts! Jobs, not cuts!” the crowd chanted.
“We’re here for the families across America,” said Saunders, “from California to New York, who have had enough.”
Holding signs that read, “Hands off our Medicare,” “Stop the sequester,” and “Tax Wall Street, Rebuild Main Street,” the more than 1,000-person crowd in Senate Park was a show of solidarity among members of AFSCME, AFL-CIO, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), SEIU, CWA, and others.
Too many politicians have “selective sight,” Saunders said. “They don’t truly see the workers who toil day after day, night after night…. Yes, they can see the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. But somehow, some way, everybody else is invisible to them.”
Workers gathered at the rally had a straightforward message for their representatives in Congress: We don’t need more cuts to vital programs like Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. What we need is jobs—to take care of our families, support neighborhoods and communities, and grow our economy. And we need fairness: it’s time for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to start paying their fair share.
“We’re the ones who have made this nation great,” Saunders said. “We’re the ones whose work touches all communities. And we’re the true wealth-builders across this land!”
The series of spending cuts known as “the sequester” is set to go into effect at the end of this month, and could eliminate as many as 1.4 million jobs. It would have disastrous consequences for many American families still recovering from the Bush Recession, and could have adverse economic effects for the nation and the world.
Ohio Congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge also was present at the rally. Behind the podium, Pres. Saunders was joined by AFL-CIO Pres. Richard Trumka and AFGE Pres. J. David Cox Sr. in demanding jobs, not cuts for middle-class families.
Secretary-Treasurer: Immigration Reform Key to AFSCME’s Fight for Workers
by Cynthia McCabe | February 12, 2013
Just as it advanced the cause of civil rights and women’s rights in decades past, AFSCME will push comprehensive immigration reform now as part of its fight for workers’ rights, Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes said Tuesday, addressing attendees of the union’s Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.
AFSCME and the American labor movement have an obligation to challenge unfair working conditions and social injustice for all workers, Reyes said. Under the nation’s current immigration system, employers are free to exploit the nation’s 11 million undocumented workers for their labor. Poor wages and working conditions for these workers negatively affect all workers.
“There is a shadow economy with millions of desperate, low-wage workers who put up with miserable working conditions, it drives down wages across the board,” Reyes said. “A shadow economy that exploits not only aspiring citizens, but every worker in America.”
Reyes recently joined Pres. Barack Obama in Las Vegas as he outlined his principles for common-sense immigration reform. It’s a plan that AFSCME supports, Reyes told Legislative Conference attendees, because it includes a full path to citizenship and helps keep together families that now live under the threat of deportation.
Legislative Conference participants filled out commitment cards, pledging to launch local union committees to fight for reform. In the coming months, that will include rallies, call-in days of action and the gathering of petition signatures.
Reyes pointed out that America’s undocumented workers are not nameless, faceless and off in some distant state. They and their children are our neighbors, the people we serve each day in hospitals and in schools. They provide the labor that many shun – harvesting crops, cleaning hotels and clearing restaurant tables – grinding out meager wages in sweatshops that exist from South Carolina to Iowa. They pay taxes and give to their churches and charities. They and their children want the same things we want: adequate wages and working conditions, a quality education and a shot at the American Dream.
AFSCME must help them, Reyes said. More than 16 million American families have a family an undocumented family member. That includes AFSCME families, Reyes said.
“We need to come together for these aspiring citizens and their families. With our voices, a new generation of American workers will enter the mainstream of American life.”
Saunders Calls for Forging Labor Unity
by Kate Childs Graham | February 12, 2013
AFSCME President Lee Saunders welcomed (left to right) Communications Workers of America Pres. Larry Cohen, SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry, Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO) Pres. Sean McGarvey and American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten to the 2013 Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Khalid Naji-Allah)Unity in the labor community is crucial at a time of relentless attacks from anti-worker politicians trying to cripple unions’ ability to organize new members and collectively bargain. That was the message Monday from Pres. Lee Saunders, who brought together leaders of the nation’s major unions during AFSCME’s Legislative Conference in Washington, DC.
Saunders welcomed American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randi Weingarten, Building and Construction Trades Department (AFL-CIO) Pres. Sean McGarvey, Communications Workers of America Pres. Larry Cohen and SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry for the panel discussion on labor unity.
In gathering, the union leaders sent a message that might have been unheard of just a few years earlier: Labor is unified and will strengthen ties to best fight its political opponents, on behalf of America’s working families.
Beginning in Wisconsin in early 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker unleashed a full-scale assault on collective bargaining, AFSCME brought together what had at times been discordant groups. That coalition building developed as similar attacks unfolded in Ohio, Michigan and across the country.
On Monday, the union presidents spoke about the struggles their members face: threats to retirement security, unemployment, threats to collective bargaining and our broken immigration system. They acknowledged that stronger unity across the labor movement, while difficult to achieve, is critical to rebuilding the middle class. Saunders issued them a challenge to not let past history or differences of opinion sidetrack the effort.
And he challenged his own union’s members and leaders to carry the coalition-building effort home with them.
“AFSCME at every level needs to reach out and forge unity,” he said. “We will do the work of labor unity here at the national level, but we need you to replicate this unity at the state and local level. The challenges of 2011 and 2012 taught us valuable lessons about what it takes to win. Labor unity is an essential ingredient of success.”
Members’ Courageous Stories Earn Prestigious Reed Award
by Yanik Ruiz-Ramón | February 12, 2013
As the 2012 Presidential election was in full swing, AFSCME Local 127 (Council 36) members Richard Hayes, Joan Raymond, and Temo Fuentes told their stories and helped definitively shift the national conversation about the best candidate to represent all Americans, not just the wealthiest 1 percent.
In recognition of these members' influence during the election, Campaigns and Elections Magazine awarded AFSCME a prestigious Reed Award for its “Meet Richard” video series. It won in the Web Video: Ballot Initiative or Independent Expenditure category.
The video series highlighted Richard and Joan, who are San Diego sanitation workers whose route includes the wealthy La Jolla, Calif., community where Mitt Romney has a beachfront villa. Temo repairs the fire trucks that service La Jolla. They told the world how Romney's harmful economic policies would affect them and working people across America.
Their stories exploded, garnering more than 1.6 million views and receiving coverage from Politico, MSNBC, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, FOX News’ Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and The Washington Post, among many others. It was even featured by late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, who spoofed it with a video called “Manservants for Mitt.”
AFSCME launched the video series two weeks after Romney's infamous 47 percent remarks and right before the Vice Presidential debate. It helped keep the spotlight on Romney’s out-of-touch comments and kept the focus on the right-wing ticket’s dangerous policies for working families.
Richard, Joan, and Temo told their stories and they were heard. Loudly and clearly.
President Saunders: No Time for Fair-Weather Friends
by Cynthia McCabe | February 11, 2013
President Lee Saunders had a message Monday for Democratic politicians who profess to stand with working families and unions while on the campaign trail, but then take a hard right turn after getting elected.
“I am sick and tired of the fair-weather Democrats who pledge to stick with us through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, but file for divorce right after the honeymoon,” Saunders said, drawing a standing ovation from the more than 500 AFSCME members attending the 2013 Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C.
He called out the anti-worker tactics of leaders like Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, comparing them to those of right-wing politicians Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio. That message resonated with the activists in the room, who have been hit hard by efforts like Nutter’s and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s to eliminate collective bargaining, terminate contracts, slash pay, pensions and other benefits and privatize public services.
“Mayor Nutter is giving tax breaks to the super rich while asking us to sacrifice,” said Ethelind Baylor, a member of AFSCME Council 33. “He’s coming for our retirement security and our rights on the job. President Saunders lends his voice to our fight.”
AFSCME activists at the Legislative Conference spent three days strategizing how to best fight these attacks nationwide.
Attendees were also called upon to seize the moment and push forward the cause of comprehensive immigration reform. AFSCME supports a reform plan that includes a path to citizenship for undocumented workers already living in the United States.
“It’s time to provide a path to citizenship that lets all men and women, regardless of their skin color or where they were born, participate fully in the life of our nation,” Saunders said. “There should be no second-class citizens in America.”
Attendees also heard from Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes as she made it clear that immigration reform is key to AFSCME’s ongoing fight for workers. They spoke out for “Jobs Not Cuts” at a rally on Capitol Hill, then held more than 75 meetings with members of the Senate and U.S. House to urge them to build an economy that works for all, protect vital public service and commit to comprehensive immigration reform.
Ohio Workers Protest Effort to Make State “Right-to-Work-for-Less”
by David Patterson | February 11, 2013
ASHLAND, Ohio — AFSCME members of Council 8 and OCSEA joined with other activists at a “No Rights At Work” rally in Ashland, Ohio, recently to push back against tea-party activists bent on turning the Buckeye State into the country’s 25th “right-to-work-for-less” state.
The rally and press conference occurred in front of a building used by the tea party – to train its followers on how to collect petitions to put so-called right-to-work on the ballot.
Speakers at the rally said that these efforts are an insult to the hardworking people of Ohio and that such laws result in more injuries and deaths on the job, as well as lower wages for workers.
Dan Mapes, vice president of AFSCME Local 3088 for the City of Mansfield, told reporters that now is not the time to push an anti-worker agenda like right-to-work-for-less while Ohioans are struggling to find work and dig out of the Great Recession.
“The City of Mansfield has had a rough time over the last few years,” said Mapes. “Mansfield has had several rounds of layoffs, and the remaining city workers have to scramble to maintain city services.”
“‘No Rights at Work’ kills jobs and will weaken our communities,” said Bob White, a corrections sergeant at nearby Richland Correctional Institution and OCSEA member. “We need to value the hard work and the people who built our state and nation. If we stand together to protect good-paying jobs in our community then you, me and all of us will be stronger.”
Learn more about right-to-work-for-less laws here.
The Decline of the Reward for Work
by Clyde Weiss | February 11, 2013
You always thought that if you worked hard, you’d be rewarded for your work with decent wages and benefits. But something has been eating away at that reward, and it’s not just inflation.
“There has been, over the past decade, a sharp decline in the reward for work,” writes Thomas B. Edsall, author of The Age of Austerity and other books, and a professor of journalism at Columbia University.
Writing in The New York Times, Edsall details this decline by citing the research of Cleveland Federal Reserve economists Margaret Jacobson and Filippo Occhino. They explain why workers’ wages have not kept up with their productivity, a standard measure of how well workers are compensated for their labor.
They attribute the widening gap to the decline in U.S. manufacturing and politically motivated changes to workers’ ability to organize that depressed unionization rates. That adversely affects the economy, the study argues.
Workers aren’t powerless against this widening gap. They can help reverse the trend by increasing the bargaining power of labor. That means fighting a corporate-driven agenda to undermine workers’ rights in Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states.
AFSCME members are doing just that, and we will continue to fight because unions built the working middle class and it will take unions to protect it.
Philly Mayor Goes “Full Scott Walker”
by Pablo Ros | February 08, 2013
Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s latest attempt to deprive workers of their right to collectively bargain borrows from the playbook of ultra-conservative Republican governors Rick Snyder of Michigan and Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
Mayor 1 Percent Nutter’s new trick play? If you don’t have the support of the public for your anti-worker schemes, go right to a state Supreme Court stacked with conservatives.
On Tuesday, Mayor Nutter asked Philadelphia’s highest court to impose the terms of a contract on his city’s public employees, members of AFSCME District Council 33 – terms they maintain will result in drastic cuts to the vital services of the communities they serve. In effect, Nutter has attempted to bypass the process of collective bargaining and dismantle its 40-year history in the state of Pennsylvania.
At a press conference Wednesday, AFSCME District Council 33 Pres. Pete Matthews said the mayor “has gone full Scott Walker with this attack on public sector workers.”
And full Rick Snyder, who pulled a similar trick in Michigan last month by asking a Republican court to nullify challenges to the so-called “right-to-work” law that he hurriedly signed in last year’s lame-duck legislative session.
“This will do nothing to reach a fair contract settlement, but it could set a precedent that could have far-reaching and harmful effects on public employee contract bargaining in Pennsylvania,” Matthews said. “But Mayor Nutter doesn’t seem to care… All he is interested in doing is dictating terms to our union and other city workers. He has shown no interest in conducting real negotiations.”
In 1970, collective bargaining in Pennsylvania became reality when the state Legislature recognized the need to respect workers’ rights for public employees. Consequently, a successful organizing campaign led by then-Council 13 Director and former-AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee resulted in the biggest statewide organization of public workers.
Omar Salaam, a Philadelphia sanitation worker for more than 13 years, travels to neighborhoods across the city to keep them “neat and clean,” he said. “I am proud of the work I do because it’s rewarding when a neighbor walks out and says, ‘Thank you.’ Unfortunately, this mayor has chosen to disregard my commitment to this city and take me for a fool. This mayor thinks we are stupid, but I have one thing to tell him. We aren’t.”
AFSCME DC 47 Pres. Cathy Scott attended the press conference in solidarity, along with representatives of community and civic groups, including Jobs with Justice, Philadelphia Unemployment Project, Unite Here, and Fight for Philly. Labor groups, such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and many, many more, also came out in droves to stand in solidarity for justice for all workers.
Philadelphia city workers have done their best to negotiate with Nutter and continue to do so. Members of AFSCME DC 33 are proud to say they pulled together to help their city find real solutions to its budget problems.
Cuts in Mental-Health Funding Pose Risks for States
by Joye Barksdale | February 08, 2013
The recent spotlight on the intersection between mental-health disease and gun violence makes the case that we should put more support – not less – into mental-health care, Alyx Beckwith, a licensed outpatient therapist, wrote in The Washington Post. Yet Medicaid reimbursement rates have actually declined steadily since 2008, and 2013 will see another round of cuts.
Beckwith, based in Raleigh, N.C., works mostly with disadvantaged children and teenagers. One of his patients, a 14-year-old boy he calls “Trevor,” threatened to “light his house on fire and stab everyone in the family” the day before the Sandy Hook school shooting.
Trevor is a schizophrenic whose medical coverage provides for mental health care. But because most psychiatrists in Trevor’s area don’t accept Medicaid due to low reimbursement rates, there is a two- to three-month wait until he can get the help he needs.
North Carolina is not unique. Throughout the nation, states have cut more than $4 billion in funding for mental health from 2009 through 2012, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors. The trend is expected to continue for several years. Yet, the number of people who received services from state mental health community-based systems increased by 10 percent from 2007 to 2010.
“States are responsible for a larger portion of mental health services than they are for physical services, which means mental health is hit hard by state budget negotiations,” Beckwith wrote. “In my professional opinion, Trevor needs to be admitted to an inpatient facility for evaluation and monitoring. That’s not an option for the poor in our fractured system.
“Gallup polling last month found that more than 80 percent of Americans support increased spending for youth mental health programs,” Beckwith concluded. “In practice, our states are moving in the opposite direction. That cannot continue.”
Union Lawsuit: ‘Right-to-Work-for-Less’ Law Violates Michigan Constitution
by Clyde Weiss | February 08, 2013
Michigan legislators violated the state’s constitution and other laws when they debated and then voted in a divisive right-to-work-for-less measure that Gov. Rick Snyder later signed into law last December. That’s according to a union coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit filed last week demanding the law be struck down.
In a lawsuit filed on behalf of a journalist, citizens, legislators, and unions, the groups contend Michigan’s lawmakers violated the state Constitution and Open Meetings Act, and the First Amendment, when they debated and acted on the measure on Dec. 6, 2012.
Lawmakers who supported the corporate-backed legislation rushed it through during their lame-duck session rather than allow it to proceed through the standard committee hearing process, where members of the public could weigh in. Instead, they acted while members of the public and some journalists not already present in the Capitol were locked out for more than four hours.
“I was there, on the Capitol lawn when they locked down the Capitol Building,” said AFSCME Council 25 Sec.-Treas. Lawrence A. Roehrig, also an AFSCME International vice president. “It looked like martial law had been declared: The Michigan State Police took control of the entrances and exits, and members of their SWAT team roamed the building and grounds. This is not the way our government is supposed to function in America in the 21st century. This looked more like East Berlin in the mid-1960s.”
“Rushing controversial bills through a lame-duck session is a bad way to make public policy under the best of circumstances; doing so on such important issues while the public is shut out of the debate every step of the way is illegal and shameful,” said ACLU of Michigan Exec. Dir. Kary L. Moss. “We have a sacred right to peacefully assemble and petition our government. When there is dissent and emotions are running high, our elected leaders should encourage more open debate, not close the doors to concerned voters.”
Michigan State AFL-CIO Pres. Karla Swift added, “Regardless of how you feel about right-to-work laws, everyone has a stake in seeing that our government conducts business in a democratic and transparent way. Any law passed while citizens were locked out of their capitol building should be struck down.”
Whether the union coalition’s lawsuit will be heard is uncertain, as Governor Snyder this week asked the state Supreme Court to decide the law’s constitutionality. However, the suit does not challenge the substance of the law – only the illegal and undemocratic process used in enacting it. AFSCME agrees that the law was passed illegally. We also maintain that the law itself should be overturned because it is an assault on democracy designed to undermine workers’ rights.
“Governor Snyder and the Republicans have tried every trick they have been able to imagine to ensure that the people have no voice in the debate over right-to-work-for-less,” said AFSCME Council 25 Pres. Albert Garrett. “Their conduct is shameful, and will not bear the light of day or a breath of fresh air. Governor Snyder’s latest gambit is an attempt to pre-empt any legal challenge to this reprehensible law by going directly to the Supreme Court, where his party holds the majority and he is about to appoint another justice. This chicanery must not stand.”
Learn more about right-to-work-for-less laws here.
