Public Employee Press

Letters to the editor

Hits union on JTPs
It is disturbing to read DC 37 Executive Director Roberts praise (in “DC 37 JTPs rise from welfare to work,” PEP September 2008) welfare-to-work programs, which damage wages, workers’ rights and labor organizing.

Companies and agencies that hire recipients, such as the Parks Dept., can legally pay less than the minimum wage, with no benefits or sick time (in exchange for “training”).
Adding thousands to the job search pool who wouldn’t ordinarily be there except for being forced to drives down wages and weakens union bargaining power.

Ms. Roberts proposes that our city stop paying $70 million to private contractors, and fill custodial jobs with welfare recipients. How can the head of a union reasonably call for slashing wages and benefits and tout it as a model to replicate? The decline in union membership and the erosion of good jobs with benefits is directly related to welfare-to-work policy.

It is time for unions to question and analyze welfare-to-work programs, recognize who benefits, and reject them as anti-union and anti-human.

—Diane Pagen, MSW
Social Worker, Local 768

Editor’s Note: Economists may long debate all the effects of welfare-to-work programs, but certainly helping people move from welfare to real jobs benefits them and their families. The workers interviewed for the PEP article werevery proud of what they had accomplished. And when it comes to DC 37 policy, you seem to have it all backwards. Lillian Roberts and District Council 37 are calling for city agencies to replace private contractors by hiring former Job Training Program participants into regular city jobs with full union pay, benefits and rights.

Calls for early retirement plan for NYC
Some suggestions for your paper:

1) How about an e-mail address for members to contact you?

2) How about an article on buyouts or early-retirement plans as a way of saving the city money?

If ever there was a time for an early-retirement package for civil service workers it is now. The city and state budgets need to be severely cut in the most humane way possible. Normal attrition slows dramatically during economic downturns. No one wants to be laid off, collect unemployment insurance, face possible foreclosure and possibly be forced to relocate to another part of the country in search of work.

New Jersey, Chrysler auto and countless other organizations have already enacted early-retirement programs. By voluntarily eliminating many older higher-paid employees rather than forcing younger workers who need their pay most into a bleak job market, early retirement makes sense. Let’s hope the powers that be in the city and state recognize that such a plan, administered quickly and properly, can save much human suffering as well as millions of dollars. The city successfully employed voluntary retirements plans over forced layoffs in 1991, 1995 and 1996.

The time to act is now before the budget deficit grows even larger due to decreased tax revenues from Wall Street, general sales and property taxes.

—Mark Shoenfield
Local 2627

Let’s veto the veto
I see the City Council passed our residency bill by 50-1. That wonderful Christmas present is a tribute to Carmen Charles, Lillian Roberts and the political power of our union.

Free at last, free at least, Hallelujah!

I have wanted a house of my own for soooo long, and now I think I can finally find something I can afford that’s not too far of a commute.
The mayor says he will veto our residency victory. He just reminds me of the old union song: “If the boss gets in the way, we’re gonna roll right over him. We’re gonna roll the union on!”

—Sarah Perkins
Local 420

Editor’s note: The mayor did veto the residencey bill (see Residency relief passes 50-1), so we will just have to “roll right over him!”

Bailout waste
When taxpayers gave Bank of America a $25 billion bailout, the country’s largest bank was supposed to use the fund to help the economy. Instead, they squandered the money on foreign investments, executive salaries and corporate jets.

Then they ripped off their own workers by not paying for their health care and dumping the problem on various cash-strapped states, which means on mostly working-class taxpayers.

Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, BOA is asking for billions more in bailout funds.

They want me, as a taxpayer, to bail them out again because they’re in a tight place, but when I was in a little financial squeeze myself and paid my credit card bill late, BOA raised my interest rate.

This is too much! President Barack Obama should force all the bankers and brokers to use the bailout funds to help the economy by extending easier credit to working people, or make them give back the taxpayers’ money.

I agree with the PEP cover that showed Lillian Roberts leading a demonstration on Wall Street under a headline that said, “Bailout must help workers!”

—Mary Harper
Local 1549

More on economy
I want to hear more about what’sgoing to improve the economy instead of slam-throwing while the CEOs laugh to the bank while working, struggling people lose their homes and worry about paying their bills. Wake up, America!

—Delores Williams
Retiree