Melinda Pearson, a Next Waver and Local 4001 (Minnesota Council 5) member, put it this way, “Cuts to Social Security and Medicare are simply wrong. Access to medical care, regardless of your income, should be a basic right. Retiring with dignity should also be considered a right. We pay into the Social Security system from the time that we begin working. It should be there for all of us when we come to the sunset of our lives.”

In the coming weeks, young AFSCME members will join together with members of all ages to call upon Congress to protect Medicare and Social Security. If you are 35ish or under, join our tele-town hall this Monday, January 28, to learn how you can be involved in the fight.

This was one day after 500 protested Nutter’s harmful policies outside of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, DC, where Nutter was chairing the meeting.

On the holiday weekend honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Saunders spoke of the slain civil rights leader and called for a better Philadelphia for all workers. King’s dream of a just society that protected the rights of working families is under attack in the City of Brotherly Love.

Since taking office, Nutter has gone out of his way to cut taxes for the wealthy while asking for more and more sacrifices from the city’s public workforce. He’s demanded that workers exchange their retirement security for a tiny wage increase, while at the same time demanding that they give the city more power to put them out of work for weeks on end without pay.

“How can he pretend to tell other Mayors how to run their city when he can’t even negotiate contracts with City workers here in Philadelphia,” Scott asked.

Matthews added: “This mayor continues to disrespect the hard work city workers do. He refuses to treat them with the dignity they deserve and honor the words he campaigned on.”

Saunders told the gathered crowd about King paying the ultimate price for standing with workers, the men of AFSCME Local 1733 in Memphis, where he was slain while speaking out for sanitation workers’ rights.

“Mayor Nutter considers himself a man of the people – but in reality, he’s a man of only certain people: the top 1 percent,” President Saunders said. “He advocates for the wealthy, not the workers. He supports the corporations, not the cops. He champions the people with a lot, not the folks with too little. Dr. Martin Luther King knew that civil rights and workers’ rights were connected.”

That’s according to a new report by the Working Poor Project, using the most recent data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Their findings mean nearly a third of all working families are struggling – up from 28 percent in 2007, at the start of the Great Recession.

“The total number of people … could reach 50 million in the next few years. That’s roughly equivalent to the total number of people living in California, Oregon and Washington combined,” say the report’s authors, Brandon Roberts, Deborah Povich and Mark Mather.

A family of four is considered to be living below the poverty line if they make less than $22,811.

The increase of poverty in America is familiar to AFSCME, which is why we are dedicated to preserving the economic safety net – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – in the face of corporate-backed efforts to undermine it through reckless budget cuts.

Here are more sobering numbers from the Working Poor Report, “Low-Income Working Families: The Growing Economic Gap”:

• In 2011, there were 23 million children in low-income working families.
• In 10 states, the share of low-income working families increased by 5 percentage points or more between 2007 and 2011.
• The richest 20 percent of working families took home nearly half (48 percent) of all income, while those in the bottom 20 percent received less than 5 percent.

Read the full and sobering report here.

Showing solidarity with their sisters and brothers in Philadelphia, the crowd marched in front of the Capital Hilton hotel, where the Philadelphia mayor was chairing a meeting of the National Conference of Mayors. Holding signs that read “No More Mayor for the 1 Percent” and “Let’s Build a Better Philadelphia for ALL,” protesters called attention to Nutter’s repeated refusal to act in the best interest of all Philadelphia workers and citizens.

Since taking office, Nutter has gone out of his way to cut taxes for the wealthy while asking for more and more sacrifices from the city’s public workforce. He’s demanded that workers exchange their retirement security for a tiny wage increase, while at the same time demanding that they give the city more power to put them out of work for weeks on end without pay. 

Opposition to Nutter’s 1 percent favoritism also will be broadcast loudly tomorrow at a rally in Philadelphia, where AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders will join other union members in calling on the mayor to stand with workers.

“Instead of standing up for workers, Mayor Nutter thinks nothing of waging class warfare against the hard-working men and women who provide vital services for the residents of the City of Brotherly Love,” Saunders said. “For more than four years, he has refused to negotiate a contract with the city’s public workers. He’s shut down schools and libraries, and has made it clear that he is willing to stand with the wealthy corporations and individuals in Philadelphia and give little or nothing to working families and their communities.”

Nutter’s most recent move: patting workers on the back with one hand, offering them a 2.5 percent wage increase, while picking their pockets with the other hand, taking thousands of dollars from workers with threatened cuts in overtime pay and forced furloughs. 

AFSCME DC 33 Pres. Pete Matthews and DC 47 Pres. Cathy Scott called out Nutter’s disingenuous plan, pointing out that it’s not a raise when you take away more than you give.

Philadelphia’s public employees have pulled together to help their city find real solutions to the budget problems that have faced many American communities during these years following the Bush Recession. In Philadelphia, they already provided the city real savings. And they have gone four years without a pay increase – saving the city even more.

But Mayor Nutter won’t be satisfied until the city’s workers earn less and give up the retirement security they have worked for throughout their careers in public service. We must show our solidarity with our sisters and brothers; and Mayor Nutter’s policies for the 1 percent must be stopped.

Gleichman, 58, died Jan. 11 while on vacation with his family in Mexico.

A resident of Takoma Park, Md., Gleichman joined SEIU in 2002, having worked previously at the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and then as general counsel of the Federal Mine Safety and Review Commission during the administration of Pres. Bill Clinton.

At SEIU, Gleichman’s responsibilities included supervising legal issues involving the union’s advocacy on behalf of working families, and fighting income inequality. An expert on inter-union relations, he also helped bridge relations with AFSCME, especially in growing union strength through joint organizing efforts.

With his guidance, the two unions reached a “no-raid” agreement in 2005 that neither union would attempt to raid, decertify as a union or otherwise interfere with existing representation rights. The agreement also established a joint committee to address issues of union density and jurisdiction, and created a joint "Unity Local" of child care providers in California and Pennsylvania.

In 2010, that cooperation extended to Missouri, where approximately 12,000 home care attendants united in the Missouri Home Care Union, a partnership between AFSCME Council 72 and SEIU.

“Norm was invaluable in helping AFSCME and SEIU bridge the gap between our two great unions,” said AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders. “He worked tirelessly on behalf of workers seeking strength on the job through union representation. We will miss his expertise and his friendship.”

From February 11-13, fired-up activists will strategize and organize at a series of workshops on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), retirement security, the threat of privatization, taxes and budgets, attacks on workers’ rights and immigration fairness. Attendees will head to Capitol Hill to lobby their lawmakers on these and other issues, and hear from AFSCME leaders, including Pres. Lee Saunders and Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes. Key allies will be on hand to discuss best practices of partnerships – something AFSCME considers crucial as we face the fights ahead.

In addition, members will learn about AFSCME’s PEOPLE program to build political strength to fight for the working middle class.

They also will hear from other union leaders during a moderated panel on union solidarity. Panelists include Communication Workers of America Pres. Larry Cohen, American Federation of Teachers Pres. Randy Weingarten, SEIU Pres. Mary Kay Henry, and Sean McGarvey, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO.

AFSCME members who want to attend can download the registration form here.

As a result of the vote last week, 300 RNs now have a voice at work at the 240-bed community hospital, which employs more than 1,000 trained health care workers.

“Our concerns about patient safety issues were being ignored,” says Diane Arreola, a registered nurse at Corona for many years. “This is why a strong majority of us decided to seek representation and organize our union with UNAC/UHCP. As patient advocates, we realized that when we act collectively, we have a powerful voice and we will be heard.”

The key issues nurses at the hospital will seek to address are improvements to patient care, better working conditions, dignity, respect and a voice for all RNs.

Rita was very active in AFSCME DC47 since she began working as a social worker for the City of Philadelphia in 1980. Rita was a strong advocate for children, labor, and social justice issues, fighting hard to protect public services for all.

Rita's boundless energy was seen in her many accomplishments whether it was overseeing the AFSCME DC47 Political Action Committee; engaging in an ACLU lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia, which changed the way abuse and neglect cases are handled in Philadelphia; leading a groundbreaking wellness and disease management program for DC47; or working on a domestic partnership ordinance that passed in the City of Philadelphia — to name a few.

Shortly before her passing, Rita and her longtime partner, Carol, were married in Maryland enabling Rita to fulfill a longtime personal wish. AFSCME District Council 47 membership has lost a leader, advocate and dear friend.

They don’t run away from danger. They go to it. It’s their job, they are proud to say. And they carry on the next day, performing their duties with dedication and courage.

But walking into a horrific scene like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six adults were repeatedly shot and killed and many others injured, is something else entirely. That kind of horror is simply unimaginable.

To the 15 police officers who rushed to the school that day, it was by all accounts the worst crime scene they’d ever walked into.  They were in shock for days. In the aftermath of the massacre, a few of these officers – all members of the Connecticut Council of Police Unions (AFSCME Council 15) – are suffering from severe emotional distress and have been unable to return to work.   Traumatized by the senseless shootings, these officers had to take extended time off in order to recover.

Unfortunately, post-traumatic stress is not covered by workers’ compensation benefits under the town’s current statute. Council 15 is working with local officials, state legislators and the governor’s office for a change in state law that would provide emotional trauma benefits and allow police officers to take more time to recover. The 2013 legislative session opened Wednesday.

“These officers have been unable to function due to trauma,” says Eric Brown, an attorney for Council 15.  “But under the circumstances, they are forced to use sick and vacation time and could soon be at risk of going without a paycheck. The emotional loads they’re carrying far exceed anything they could imagine. We need to support them in every possible way.”

State Rep. Stephen Dargan, co-chairman of the legislature’s public safety committee, has indicated his support for such a measure. “The circumstances are so horrific in Newton,” he said. “We need to protect those first responders and give them all the help we can give them.”

The Newtown Board of Police Commissioners is also supportive. In a resolution passed last week, the board said that “fairness and compassion dictates” the law be changed to provide appropriate benefits to those who suffered physical and emotional injury “as a consequence of their heroic efforts” on the job. 

A “quiet war on the collective bargaining rights of public employees” is how The State Journal-Register, the capitol city’s paper of record, described the governor’s campaign against the state’s employees. But Quinn’s war resembles a scorched-earth battle. In 2011 he canceled pay raises for 30,000 public employees. Then in November, Quinn terminated AFSCME’s collective bargaining agreement with the state, leaving some 35,000 employees without the protection of a union contract.

Quinn also tried to get the Legislature to pass a pension proposal to change the way the annual cost-of-living adjustment is calculated, drastically reducing pension values over time. Following strong grassroots pressure from workers and retirees coordinated by labor’s We Are One Illinois coalition, the Legislature adjourned Tuesday without acting on the proposal because it lacked the necessary votes.

Taking away collective bargaining rights from public service workers is right out of the playbook of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who stripped more than 200,000 public service workers of their union rights in March 2011, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, whose failed effort in 2011 to strip the collective bargaining rights of 350,000 public service workers in that state demonstrates widespread public opposition to such efforts.

In Illinois, however, voters were not given an opportunity to express their views on Governor Quinn’s anti-worker campaign. He used the opportunity of a lame-duck session of the Legislature to squeeze through a corporate-driven agenda to undermine workers’ rights, including collective bargaining.

Taking such rights away from thousands of employees now covered by the state’s collective bargaining law will set a dangerous precedent that could imperil collective bargaining rights throughout the public sector.

This is not about saving the state money. We fear he has a more sinister goal in mind: He wants to strip workers of the protections of their union contract in an attempt to intimidate them, and ultimately to replace them with political patronage workers.

AFSCME will continue fighting for workers’ rights, and push for a repeal of this law. The voters will certainly have something to say about this as well. 

“We are grateful for Secretary Solis’ extraordinary commitment to working men and women,” President Saunders also said. “At a time when powerful, moneyed forces have come together to pursue a virulent, anti-union agenda, she focused the Department of Labor’s attention on putting Americans back to work, making the workplace safer and healthier, and protecting and preserving the rights of union members and working families.”

“She will be missed,” he added.

A welcome choice when Pres. Barack Obama nominated her in 2008, Solis will be hard to replace. During her service as labor secretary, she was praised by labor unions for standing up for working families, enforcing workplace regulations, and protecting children and underpaid workers.

Today, the former Congresswoman from California reportedly intends to go back to her native Los Angeles and run for local office.

Solis, who was confirmed in February 2009 as the 25th U.S. Secretary of Labor, is the first Latina to hold this position. No doubt she will remain a strong advocate for labor unions and environmental policy reform, as she has been throughout her career.

That’s the new top rate Congress set on wages and salaries as part of the recently passed fiscal cliff deal. Previously, wages and salaries were taxed at 35 percent. But the rate that rich folks pay on their investment income was raised to only 20 percent.

Why is this disparity important? Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson notes that “taxing wages and salaries at a higher rate than investment income means that the tax code is taking a bigger bite out of a steadily shrinking share of Americans’ income. Pay from work just ain’t what it used to be.”

Meyerson also notes that “income from wages and salaries as of July 2012 constitutes the smallest share of gross domestic product [the market value of all goods and services produced in the country] since World War II” – just 43 percent. That’s down from its high of 53 percent in 1969.

What’s missing is about $1.5 trillion annually that went “to corporate profits, whose share of the economy has risen as the share going to wages has diminished,” Meyerson writes. “This shift from wages to profits is called redistribution. It is the central fact of American economic life. And it is the primary reason that economic inequality in the United States has skyrocketed.”

Corporations have been very successful in avoiding paying their fair share. The time has come for Congress to end the various legal tax dodges corporations use to beat the system – dodges that the working middle class can only envy.

Read Meyerson’s column here.

Iowa public service workers spoke out Friday against Gov. Terry Branstad’s hypocrisy of doling out bonuses to his political cronies while demanding freezes and cuts to bargaining unit employees.

Council 61, which represents 20,000 employees entering negotiations with the state this past weekend, coordinated six statewide press conferences to get the word out to the public that Branstad handed hundreds of thousands of dollars in political appointee bonuses during the last year while simultaneously targeting the middle class. That targeting includes demands that bargaining unit employees accept a two-year wage freeze, reductions in health coverage and increased insurance premium payments. Meanwhile, Branstad’s state has more than $1 billion in surplus.

Friday’s day of action in Des Moines, Sioux City, Council Bluffs, Mason City, Iowa City and Davenport put the governor on the defensive leading in to contract negotiations. AFSCME negotiators have called for modest raises of 1 percent in the first year and 2 percent in the second year, with no changes to the insurance and no employee premiums.

In Iowa City, Marty Hathaway, a corrections officer and AFSCME member was quoted in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, speaking about the huge bonuses paid out by Branstad, including to one appointee who raked in a $30,000 bonus each of the last three years.

“That is more than some state employees make in a year,” said Hathaway.

Branstad has also proposed huge tax incentives to an Egyptian company, offering them a $648,000 tax break for each permanent job they create.

In Council Bluffs, AFSCME member and corrections officer John Good expressed his dissatisfaction with these policies in the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil. “We believe Iowans deserve honest, open and scandal-free government,” said Good.

Added AFSCME member Paula Barker in the Sioux City Journal:  “There is a double standard here, and we just want everybody to play on a fair and square board.”

Negotiations will occur every Saturday and Sunday through January.

Danny Homan, AFSCME Iowa Council 61 president, and also an AFSCME International vice president, told WHO-TV, the Des Moines Register and the Associated Press:  “Today the state has a surplus and reserves over a billion dollars partly because of sacrifices made by state employees. We stand ready to work with the governor in the coming days.  But we will not stand for further cuts to Iowa’s cities, towns and neighborhoods while wasting the state surplus on lavish bonuses to appointed cronies or tax giveaways to out-of-state corporations.”

The union represents more than 20,000 public service employees who work for states, counties, municipalities and other political subdivisions. Council 72 also represents a large and growing number of workers who provide home care and child care services in their communities.

Thirty-six delegates, plus guests, attended the convention in Columbia, Mo., on Dec. 19. Among the amendments they approved to their newly revised constitution involves restructuring the makeup of the officers and executive board. Among those elected to new posts:

• Michelle Mason, president of Local 2730, was elected council president. The direct care attendant at Bellefontaine Habilitation Center in St. Louis was unopposed.
• Jeff Mazur, who was serving as the council’s acting executive director, was elected director. Mazur, also a member of Local 876, was unopposed.

Two Council 72 members also were recognized for their contributions to the council and their local unions:

Jennifer Hargreaves, a member of Local 622, was presented with the council’s organizing award in recognition of her efforts to increase the local’s membership by approximately 28 percent this year. The local represents developmental disability workers at the Nevada Habilitation Center in Nevada, Mo.

Nispa Bryant, past president of Local 3160 in Kansas City, Mo., was honored with the council’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her years of service to her union. A direct care staffer working in Kansas City, Mo., Bryant has been a Council 72 member since 1996.

AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders congratulated the newly elected officers, award recipients and the members of Council 72 for their achievements. “Your sisters and brothers throughout AFSCME salute you for taking this step to build an even stronger union. At a time when public sector unions are threatened by right-wing, corporate-driven lawmakers intent on weakening the rights of workers, you have demonstrated a commitment to work together on behalf of your members to build a union we can all be proud of. Congratulations!”

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) AFSCME members in each state are cautiously optimistic that their states will become the next in a growing guild that has adopted marriage equality.

Kate Ekman is an office administrator at Northeastern Illinois University and a member of Local 1989 (Illinois Council 31). When she took the job and found out that she could join the union, she “jumped at the chance.” Since then, she has become active in her local, recently joining the executive board. Ekman is also a member of the LGBT community.

Ekman helped her local negotiate contract language that is more inclusive of LGBT people.  For her, the link between contracts and marriage equality is simple.

“If we have marriage equality, at least at the state level, we will provide a lot more of the equality that some of our contracts provide,” Ekman says. “It will institutionalize and equalize all of those benefits.”

Legislators across the aisle are supportive of the marriage equality law.

Ekman called her state legislators yesterday to urge them to support marriage equality. “But I also told them not to pass anything that would put our pensions at risk.”

In Rhode Island, AFSCME Retiree Jim Gillis, who is gay, is similarly hopeful that 2013 will be the year for marriage equality in his state. 

“Marriage is a right everyone should enjoy,” Gillis says. “Everyone works with gay and lesbian people, whether they know it or not. Everyone has gay and lesbian relatives, whether they know it or not. Everyone has gay and lesbian neighbors, whether they know it or not. By supporting marriage equality, you are supporting people just like yourself. “

Retirees face particular challenges where marriage equality doesn’t exist. They lack equal access to pension plan benefits – like survivor options – and other critical safety net programs that so many retirees rely on.

If achieved, winning marriage equality at the state level is only half of the battle. Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act is the only way that Gillis, Ekman and all LGBT workers and retirees will have equal marriage rights under the law.

OSHA estimates that more than 32 million workers are exposed to 650,000 hazardous chemical products in more than 3 million American workplaces. Most affected are public works, transportation, school employees and health care.

The new regulation is designed to keep workers safe. It requires chemical labeling, developing chemical fact sheets and training workers on the hazards of and safe work practices for the chemicals they work with. The regulation also requires that chemical manufacturing companies use standardized labels, pictures and chemical fact sheets.

The law isn’t set to go into effect until 2016, but employers are required to train their employees on these changes by Dec. 1, 2013.

Learn all about the Hazcom changes in a new webinar on AFSCME’s Online Leadership Academy. Health and Safety Specialist Diane Brown will give you the inside scoop on the law, explaining what the changes mean to AFSCME members. The webinar will take place at 6 p.m. EST, Tues., Jan. 15. Register online now (you’ll need your member ID).

As The New York Times reported this week, “The showdown is certain to ignite regional tensions over the way the pensions of public schoolteachers outside of Chicago are paid for, and could run up against legal barriers with a state Constitution that limits how pensions can be changed in the first place.”

Quinn's proposal would change the way the annual cost-of-living adjustment is calculated, drastically reducing pension values over time.

Thousands of active and retired public service workers, including members of AFSCME Council 31, are demonstrating their opposition to this assault on retirement security during two “Action Days” at the state Capitol, yesterday and today. 

AFSCME, which is also a leading member of the National Public Pension Coalition, has long maintained that undermining public pension systems to fix a state’s economic troubles is not only unnecessary, but misses the target. It’s not pensions that caused those troubles in the first place, but a lack of revenues – especially from corporations that take advantage of tax loopholes, and the wealthy who have not paid their fair share of taxes. Read more about the myths of public employee pensions here.

Let’s look at just a few facts, from the We Are One Illinois coalition, of which AFSCME Council 31 is a member.

• For decades, Illinois politicians shorted or skipped the employer contributions required by law, creating the nation’s largest pension debt. All that time, public employees paid their fair share. It’s wrong to punish public employees for the actions – or inaction – of irresponsible politicians.
• A public employee’s pension is his or her own life savings – they typically contribute 8 percent, 9 percent or more from each paycheck to their pension fund. Illinois public employees have always paid their share, faithfully and in full.
• Most Illinois public employees are ineligible for Social Security. Unlike every private-sector worker in America, police and firefighters, teachers and university employees, city of Chicago and Cook County employees don’t qualify for Social Security. Reducing the pension they earn would leave many public employees with little to fall back on in retirement.
• Illinois public employees retire on very modest pensions—on average just $32,000 a year after a career dedicated to public service. Many receive much less than this average amount.
• The Illinois Constitution states that membership in a public pension system is an enforceable contractual relationship, “the benefits of which may not be diminished or impaired.” Legislation violating this constitutional protection will cause a costly and wasteful court challenge.

Henry Bayer, AFSCME Council 31’s executive director and an AFSCME International vice president, told The New York Times, “There’s no reason to rush into this, and on the contrary, you want to be deliberate.” That’s the right course for something as serious as the retirement security of dedicated public service workers, including firefighters and police, teachers and nurses, child protection workers and disability caregivers.

AFSCME and the We Are One Illinois coalition have evaluated an alternative pension reform plan by a bipartisan group of state legislators and found that, by gutting the cost of living adjustment provision that protects retirees from rising costs, it would cut workers’ already modest pensions by nearly a third.

Instead, the coalition offered its own framework for a fair and constitutional solution to the pension funding problem. It would provide an ironclad guarantee that state government could not skip its pension payments in the future; close wasteful corporate tax loopholes worth $2 billion a year, enabling politicians to stop using the retirement funds as a credit card; and offer that if the first two conditions are met, active employees could contribute an additional 2 percentage points of their salary to help close the shortfall.

We Are One Illinois has called for a mid-January summit meeting between labor and legislators to discuss the coalition’s framework. We suggest that the governor and lawmakers back off their schemes now and accept labor’s offer to engage in a deliberative process that solves the pension funding problem fairly.

The bipartisan agreement will bring in $620 billion in new revenues, while offering an economic lifeline to the vast majority of working and unemployed Americans and their families.

The compromise wasn’t perfect. Additional new revenue could have been raised had Clinton-era tax rates returned for everyone making more than $250,000. And, as AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders notes, the compromise “sets the stage for major battles over spending cuts in the months ahead.” 

Looming in the next two months is the need to extend the federal debt ceiling which tea party Republicans have pledged to use as a new opportunity to extract further cuts in spending. 

Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are still at grave risk.

“In the weeks ahead, we must remain vigilant,” Saunders says. “Republican leaders in Congress have vowed to continue their demands for deep, drastic cuts to vital services that protect our communities – including funds for public schools, public safety, transportation, scientific research and college loans. They have made it clear that cuts in programs for veterans, seniors, students and low-income citizens will all be on the table. We must do everything in our power to protect these lifeline services.”

There are alternatives to unnecessary, reckless cuts. Billions of dollars can be saved, for example, through reforms that would not directly affect benefits and programs that Americans rely upon. Allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices is one example. Special interest tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporations need to be eliminated before the earned benefits of seniors on Social Security and Medicare are cut. AFSCME also supports a close review of the bloated Defense Department budget. 

“Moving forward we will intensify our efforts to engage our leaders and activists in these battles,” Saunders says. “We will continue to press Congress and President Obama to focus on job creation, which is the best way to stimulate our economy.”

More than 150 delegates attended, representing more than 24,000 state and university, and private sector, employees. They ratified their first constitution and elected a slate of officers – including Pres. Patrick Moran (Local 770), Sec.-Treas. Flo Jones (Local 112), Executive Vice Pres. 2 Mo Said (Local 539), Executive Vice Pres. 3 Lisa Henson (Local 1427) and Executive Vice Pres. 4 Ron Lohr (Local 898). Delegates also elected region board members, unit board members and trustees.

Council 3 represents state government workers from more than a dozen departments and agencies and university campuses.

Aside from handling official business, the delegates also heard from Pres. Lee Saunders. Council 3 is the reconstituted Council 982, which went into “Organizing Committee Status” five years ago to reorganize and rebuild. At that time, the council had fewer than 9,000 members. Today it represents more than 24,000 state and university employees.

“This council is almost three times larger than it was…in 2007,” Saunders said. “Three times bigger – and it is a model for other councils in our union. You’ve been through a lot. But today, you, the new leaders and activists, have the right and responsibility to run this union – your union.”

Saunders mentioned several highlights in the council’s recent history, including winning fair share and a Correctional Officers Bill of Rights, and stopping furloughs and pay cuts in 2011.

International Vice Pres. and Exec. Dir. of Council 67 Glenard S. Middleton, Sr., also spoke, applauding Council 3’s victories and encouraging the delegates to keep leading the way in Maryland.

Meet Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine.

They are right-wing bloggers and pseudo-researchers who appear regularly on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, hawking a plethora of anti-public employee theories. Most recently, they’ve claimed public employees “underwork.”

Biggs and Richwine [Editor’s note: “BigWhine” for short] have created a cottage industry for themselves by misusing and cherry-picking data for the sole purpose of denigrating the work and compensation of public employees. They say silly things like public school teachers make 52 percent more than they would in the private sector. Their “research” showing that teachers have less academic qualification to teach than other college graduates was so shoddy, their own right-wing think tanks banished it from their websites.

Biggs received fame, but not much fortune, as the advocate of former Pres. George W. Bush’s failed proposal to privatize Social Security. If the country had followed his lead in 2005, our economic losses would have been virtually incalculable when the stock market collapsed in 2008 and 2009. Fortunately, AFSCME members rallied nationwide and shut down Bush’s scheme.

Now this less-than dynamic duo is using data from a relatively new and obscure data set compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to bash the public sector. The American Time Use Survey is a purported measure of how Americans spend their time.  Although they have not fully revealed how they have performed their analysis, Biggs and Richwine concluded that public workers spend about 5 percent less time working per year and, therefore, the loss of 627,000 public sector jobs since the official onset of the Great Recession really has not affected public services.

They must not get out much.

AFSCME members across the country report significant problems from reduced public services.  Whether it’s closed libraries or reduced hours in Jacksonville, Fla. or  Seattle, Wash., and all points in-between or unsafe staffing levels in correctional systems in Iowa, Illinois and virtually everywhere else, the public and the workers who serve us are feeling the pinch. There are fewer cops on the beat, longer response times for fire and other emergency services, and increased class sizes in our public schools. Parks are closing, arts and sports programs are ending.

While Biggs and Richwine may want America to embrace Mitt Romney’s call to reduce the number of police, firefighters and teachers, the American voters rejected that approach on Nov. 6.

Right-wing spin aside, the real danger is that our political leaders are now focused on an austerity program that will likely reduce economic growth by 1 percent in 2013.  As we’ve seen in Europe, a reduction in public services and employment has profoundly negative effects on economic activity and quality of life. Note to BigWhine: our nation’s problem is not that we have too many public workers, it’s that we don’t have enough people working.

Steve Kreisberg is AFSCME’s Director of Collective Bargaining.

Watch an excerpt from the interview here:

That’s the challenge AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes put to a group of 44 AFSCME women leaders, who gathered last Monday in Washington, DC. At this gathering, members of the National Women’s Advisory Committee (NWAC), International Vice Presidents and senior staff members had the opportunity to discuss their vision for the Women’s Leadership Academy.

Such development is crucial for AFSCME, whose membership is more than 54 percent women. Former Pres. Gerald W. McEntee announced the creation of the Women’s Leadership Academy at the last Women’s Conference in Wisconsin last fall and under Pres. Lee Saunders’ direction, the academy continues its robust development.

Earlier this year, National Women’s Advisory Committee members surveyed hundreds of AFSCME women, asking them their three wishes to enhance women’s leadership within the union. Overwhelmingly, union women said they want more:

• Education and training;
• Mentorship; and
• Opportunities for action.

On Monday, the group wrestled with these topics individually and collectively. Their discussions, along with the survey results, will inform the development and launch of the Women’s Leadership Academy in 2013. 

We want more jobs, not more cuts to programs that our communities rely on.

With the fiscal cliff looming, we must make it clear that cuts to Medicare would mean job losses for hundreds of thousands of nurses – many who are among AFSCME’s ranks. 

In a report released in September, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association projected that a two-percent cut to Medicare would mean more than 700,000 health care jobs lost through 2021.

Just days before the November election, AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes spoke to a group of nurses in California. There, she said, “Nurses do so much for the people in your community and you deserve so much respect, as professionals, and as proud union members.”

Protecting Medicare is one of many ways AFSCME intends to respect our nurses.  Call your representatives and urge them to save nurses’ jobs.

People noticed when AFSCME retiree Rosyln Sims showed up at the Central Labor Council office in Youngstown to volunteer at the election phone bank. After all, a 92-year-old woman making phone calls to get out the vote for President Obama’s re-election wasn’t a common sight during the campaign.

For those who know her, however, her efforts were not a surprise. “Mom’s been an activist all of her life, and has been active in the Ohio AFSCME Retiree Chapter 1184, Subchapter 118,” says Joe Sims.

Rosyln is among the oldest of the hundreds of AFSCME retiree-members who volunteered for campaign activities throughout Ohio and across the country last month. Her age never slowed her.

“We probably went down there three or four days a week,” says Joe, who spent more than a month in Ohio with his mother working on the campaign. The two wanted to do what they could to help the President and other progressive candidates, but door-knocking was beyond her means so she worked the automatic phone system that dialed the numbers for her.

“There’s no coincidence why she was there. I believe she was sent by God to keep morale up.” said Richard Bailey, international representative for the Plasterers and Cement Masons union, who ran the campaign office. “It was a motivation for everybody there, including myself. You think, if she can do this every day, we can do it.”

“I was delighted to be able to participate in the election campaign, together with my son, to re-elect President Obama,” Rosyln said. “I think that, for the first time, we had a President who – and I want to include his wife as well – understood the problems of the average person who works for a livelihood. I felt we all benefitted from the passage of the health care bill, which is very important in the lives of people who work for a living.”

Rosyln, a librarian for the Youngstown City Schools before she retired, has activism in her blood, says her son. “Her mother was very active back in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”

“If you’re not satisfied with the conditions under which you live, do something about it,” says Rosyln. “I tried to.”

Will she volunteer in the next Presidential election four years from now? “Well, if I’m around, yes,” she laughs. “Absolutely.”

For many campaign activists, the fight for working families continued past Election Day. Add your voice to those calling on Congress to protect the middle class with jobs, not cuts.

At a glance, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn may not seem to have much in common politically with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Quinn is a Democrat and the others are staunch Republicans. But in recent months, Quinn has joined their ignoble fraternity: governors intent on attacking workers’ rights and scapegoating public service workers.

In an unprecedented move in November, Quinn terminated the state government’s contract with AFSCME Council 31. (Previously, Council 31 members were working under a contract extension while negotiations on a new agreement continued.) The termination had little practical effect--all terms of employment are still in place under state law--it signaled Quinn’s lack of respect for collective bargaining. And in doing so, he lumped himself with the likes of Walker and Snyder.

“In 40 years of collective bargaining, Pat Quinn is the first and only Illinois governor to terminate a union contract,” AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer said. “His action will heighten employee frustration and provoke instability in the workplace.

Quinn’s decision to nullify the union contract follows his refusal to pay a negotiated wage increase due in the last year of the contract. An independent arbitrator found Quinn in violation of the contract and ordered him to pay, but the administration went to court seeking to overturn the arbitrator’s ruling. Earlier this month, a circuit court ruled that the contract must be honored.

In recent months, Quinn has also launched a full-blown assault on public employee pensions, attempting to portray them as “extravagant” and blaming them for the state’s fiscal woes. In fact, the real problem is the state tax system that favors big business and the rich.

Fully two-thirds of the corporations in Illinois pay no corporate income tax at all. Companies including Boeing and Motorola received tax breaks topping a billion dollars. The CEOs of those two companies had the infamous distinction of earning more in compensation in 2011 than their companies paid in corporate taxes.

“Rather than telling the truth, as a real leader would do, about the fact that the state’s problems are caused by a broken and unfair tax system that lets the rich off easy, Governor Quinn has instead tried to make public employees a scapegoat,” Bayer said.

In a signal of their disgust, AFSCME members last week protested at the Chicago Cultural Center where the governor was holding a fundraiser – a birthday party he threw for himself. In addition to anger about the contract termination, they protested the governor’s attacks on retirement security, affordable health care benefits, and contractually set wages.

On that last issue, a court recently sided with workers, ruling that Quinn could not unilaterally cancel collectively bargained raises for state employees. That was the same conclusion of an arbitration process earlier, which Quinn ignored, forcing the court action. He is now appealing the court ruling.

The State-Journal Register last week admonished Quinn for his chest-thumping attacks on workers and their words should serve as the epitaph for his failed campaign: “Quinn’s quiet war on the collective bargaining rights of public employees was foolish from the start.”