Don’t Tread On Us!

By Clyde Weiss*

State governments are threatening to balance budgets on the backs of public employees. But with AFSCME’s help, they are fighting back to keep their jobs.

Even before the financial devastation wrought by the terrorists, state governments faced the deepest shortfalls in at least a decade. In August alone, more than 250,000 people joined the ranks of the unemployed.

Then came Sept. 11. Tourism plummeted. Consumers hunkered down, cutting their spending by 1.8 percent in September — the largest monthly drop in nearly 15 years. In October, 732,000 people lost their jobs, pushing the nation’s unemployment rate to an uncomfortable 5.4 percent. Governors and state legislators around the country scurried to combat billion-dollar budget deficits by slashing programs and cutting jobs.

At the White House, President Bush called for a $75-billion economic-stimulus bill heavily tilted towards more tax cuts. The Republican-led House of Representatives responded by passing, on a mostly party-line vote, a $100 billion package that earmarked more than half the tax savings for the wealthiest 1 percent.

Neither proposal offered much to laid-off workers, and offered nothing to state and local governments grappling with new security costs and public health threats. Democrats in the Senate, at AFSCME’s urging, crafted a more balanced plan. It offered $5 billion to state and local governments for Medicaid and even more to strengthen our public health system and homeland security.

While Congress debated, several states convened special legislative sessions to cut budgets and slash jobs. Cities and counties nationwide also are experiencing revenue shortfalls. Public employees, many of whom would be needed to manage the growing number of unemployed, therefore face the dismal prospect of joining their ranks.

From coast to coast, state and municipal workers — backed by their unions — have counter-attacked. They are crafting creative solutions to run departments and agencies more effectively and at less cost. They are also lobbying Congress to reduce tax giveaways to the rich and to temporarily increase federal matching rates for Medicaid — the largest form of federal assistance to states — in order to ease the pressures on state governments to cut back services and their workforces.

In New York on Oct. 30, members of AFSCME’s largest affiliate, the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/ AFSCME Local 1000 — which represents 265,000 people statewide — marched in Buffalo to demonstrate solidarity in the face of threatened layoffs. On the West Coast, members of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE)/AFSCME Council 28, which represents 19,000 state employees, have been sending e-mails and faxes to lawmakers in an urgent effort to head off a 15-percent budget cut. Similar actions are under way across the country:

• In Florida, public school employees took to the streets to oppose threatened job cuts. 
  
  
• In Ohio, union members at state-run prisons protested budget cuts and a hiring freeze, demanded that private prisons be closed instead of state facilities, and offered suggestions to prison officials on ways to improve services to save money instead of cutting jobs. 
  
  
• In Iowa, AFSCME members voted to defer four months of a scheduled pay raise to help the state avoid layoffs.

"We want the politicians — city, county, state or otherwise — to know that this is not the time to make knee-jerk cuts in delivery of those services, especially if they are [made] on the backs of our members," declared CSEA Pres. Danny Donohue, who is also an International vice president (IVP).

Dodging a bullet?

Struggling with how to cut $1.3 billion out of a $48 billion budget suffering the effects of Sept. 11, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) declared that "everything is on the table" for a special budget-cutting session of the legislature.

From the onset, education was among the targets because it accounts for $10.9 billion of the state’s budget. But Miami-Dade County public school employees, who are members of AFSCME Local 1184 (Council 79), were not about to go down without a fight. In late September, about 300 members rallied to defend their jobs, local president Sherman Henry recalls proudly.

Instead of slashing school-district funds, the employees urged lawmakers to repeal a $128-million "intangibles" tax cut — for wealthy taxpayers — that was scheduled to go into effect in January. The legislature eventually agreed to postpone the tax cut by two years, but slashed public education funding by $309 million, health and human services by $147 million, and eliminated more than 1,000 mostly vacant AFSCME-represented positions.

It could have been worse. Had the budget cuts passed by the House been adopted, "there would have been even more layoffs," says Mark Neimeiser, legislative and political director for AFSCME in Florida. Instead, lawmakers passed a more favorable budget crafted by the Senate. However, as Public Employee was going to press, the legislature had returned at Bush’s order to make further cuts. "We dodged a bullet the first time, but we still have the gun pointed at our head," says Neimeiser. He is no longer optimistic that large numbers of public employees will avoid layoffs.

States should not "try to balance the budget on the people who need the services and the people who try to provide them," insists Lynda Lloyd, president of Local 3037 (Council 79), which represents human services workers and professionals in Tallahassee. "What happens when people can’t reach workers to file their unemployment claims? It makes an already bad situation that much worse."

On the chopping block

In Ohio, a projected $1.5-billion deficit prompted Gov. Robert Taft (R) to propose cutting the budget by $600 million, increasing taxes by $465 million and tapping into a $1 billion, rainy-day fund. A number of prisons, including a privately operated state facility, were targeted for closure. As many as 800 corrections employees — at least two-thirds of them corrections officers — could lose their jobs.

The new state budget that went into effect July 1 had already trimmed prisons by $60 million, says Tim Shafer, Corrections Assembly president for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11. But the continuing financial crisis caused the governor to propose cutting another $19 million in prison funds, threatening more jobs.

"This situation will affect the security and safety of the neighborhoods around every [correctional] institution within the state of Ohio," Jim Adkins, president of the OCSEA’s Marysville chapter, declared at a protest rally in November. He was joined by more than 100 union-represented prison workers from throughout the state who congregated outside a women’s prison to protest budget cuts and a hiring freeze.

Meanwhile, all 32 OCSEA corrections chapter presidents gathered for a brainstorming session to find savings that would make a purge of the state payroll unnecessary. They also recommended closing Ohio’s two privately operated prisons — saving the state $30 million — before slashing funds from the public institutions.

"Our first duty is the safety of the taxpayers," says Shafer. "When you add inmates to a state facility while you’re cutting employees — whether they are security or other personnel — you’re basically getting into a situation where you have a staff-to-inmate ratio that is unmanageable."

OCSEA, which represents more than 37,000 state employees, asked its members for other budget-cutting ideas to help avoid the threat of 1,500 layoffs. "One idea already suggested is that money is being wasted giving inmates brand-name drugs instead of generics," says OCSEA Pres. (and IVP) Ron Alexander. "This could be wasting millions of dollars a year" — so OCSEA will take up the suggestion with state officials.

Sacrificing for jobs

"As soon as we realized there was going to be a huge budget shortfall, we started talking to the governor about ways to mitigate it," says Jan Corderman, president of Iowa Council 61 and an IVP. The difficult choice the union made ultimately will save jobs.

By a vote of 54-46 percent, members agreed in October to defer four months of their 3-percent pay raise, which would have gone into effect on July 1, and to accept early retirement incentives. Those whose age plus years of service total at least 75 are eligible to retire early, with pay for all accumulated vacation and up to 2,080 hours of sick leave.

The deal hinged on the legislature’s approving the same pact for the state’s 3,893 non-contract workers. Lawmakers did just that.

"The sole motivation in this whole early-out program — plus the delay in the 3-percent, across-the-board pay hike — is to prevent layoffs," says Corderman. The plan will save 188 AFSCME jobs this fiscal year, and even more later.

Calling on Congress

Washington state Gov. Gary Locke (D) proposed cutting $578 million from the budget to deal with a projected $1-billion deficit. Suggestions on how to do that included laying off hundreds of state workers and privatizing various services.

The Washington Federation of State Employees quickly mounted a stout defense. Pres. Duwane Huffaker and Exec. Director Greg Devereux delivered members’ messages to Locke’s office urging that he actively support a federal economic-stimulus package that could forestall job cuts.

One proposal asked Congress to increase the federal matching rate for Medicaid, thereby allowing officials to free up already budgeted funds for use in other key areas. "We were really gratified that Governor Locke was so supportive on this point," Huffaker says. "He has a determined, pro-active, creative approach to dealing with a potential $1-billion shortfall that’s going to devastate basic services to Washington residents."

Throughout the state, the union held "Stand Up for Washington" meetings at which members could speak their minds. Among them was April De Maris, a direct care worker at a state institution for the mentally disabled in Pierce County. "We need to educate the public about how much we really make here," she said when her turn came. The average person, she explained, seems to think public employees make a lot of money, perhaps too much, and could easily tolerate pay cuts.

Not so, she explained later in an interview. "A 15 percent cut [as proposed by Locke] would take away staff we need desperately to do what we’re supposed to be doing for our clients. We make sure their environment is safe. We’re their family."

That’s the message public employees need to put across: that they provide an essential service to the community, often for little compensation, and that they care deeply about their jobs.

"The union’s job is to remind people [of these essentials]," says IVP Henry Bayer, executive director of Illinois Council 31. "If people think they don’t need public employees, we need to remind them why they do. Would they have preferred that the fire department in the city of New York, for instance, was staffed by low-paid, private-sector workers? I don’t think so.

"We should be relentless in our efforts, because to let the economy slide is the wrong thing to do, and it’s the wrong thing to do to let people become unemployed. That’s not going to help us with the economy, and it’s not going to help us fight terrorism."

In the words of DC 37 Administrator Lee Saunders, whose members may face job cuts in beleaguered New York City, public employees "must be treated as partners in the rebuilding process — and the threats of layoffs, severance, furloughs or privatization are not how you treat a partner. Partners deserve to be at the table from the beginning, helping develop the plan for reconstruction."

⁺ Total membership 
*Susan Ellen Holleran contributed to this article.