Public Employee Press

TSUNAMI: They need your help

By ALFREDO ALVARADO

Labor unions throughout the United States are organizing relief efforts to help their brothers and sisters in Asia rebuild their communities after a devastating tsunami hit their shores Dec. 26. In one of the world’s worst natural disasters, the giant wave left more than 155,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless.

Scores of villages were washed away by the massive tidal wave that ripped through the shores and coastal regions of Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Indonesia and other Indian Ocean nations.

“Public workers in these countries will be heavily involved in the rebuilding process. We want to make sure that the funds will be there to help,” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, urging members to contribute to recovery funds. “We are deeply concerned about the injured and about the widespread risk of disease from contaminated water.”

The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center is coordinating labor’s humanitarian drive. “We are committed to providing workers and their families with long-term support for housing, reconstruction and other aid. We must assist our brothers and sisters in Asia who are fighting for their lives and burying their dead,” said AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.

Pete Castelli, a Solidarity Center field representative in Sri Lanka visited the coastal town of Balapitiya. “We saw entire buildings collapsed by the force of the waves,” he said. “Furniture and clothing — pieces of people’s lives —were pushed up the sides of buildings.”

Workers throughout the region will be feeling the tsunami’s impact for years to come. The destruction of factories, hotels, restaurants and roads has left tens of thousands of garment, tourist, and public sector workers without jobs.

“In the same way that AFSCME supports the workers of America, we’re reaching out to our fellow workers across the globe who’ve had their livelihoods and entire way of life taken from them by this devastating event. They face immediate hardships that are unimaginable to us here in the relatively safe and comfortable West,” said AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee.

To help in the rebuilding efforts the Solidarity Center has established a Tsunami Relief Fund. Donations to the fund will go directly to labor unions to help rebuild houses and union offices, secure jobs and purchase fishing boats, nets and other necessities.

How you can help
The DC 37 Executive Board voted Jan. 12 to contribute $5,000, and many locals are heeding Ms. Roberts’s call to forward their contributions to the DC 37 executive office so they can be bundled and sent together to the relief fund.

Members can make tax-deductible contributions by sending checks, marked Tsunami Relief in the memo line and payable to Solidarity Center Education Fund, to:

Tsunami Relief Fund
Solidarity Center
1925 K Street N.W., Suite 300
Washington, DC 20006-1105.

For a list of more than two dozen other organizations collecting for the relief effort, click here.