By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

"We are all Wisconsin now!" said the buttons members wore as they marched outside City Hall February 26.

"Whether you are in a union or not, we are all members of the labor movement now," an AFSCME speaker told a crowd of 10,000 in Chicago that same day, as protests hit every state in the nation.

The public service employees in Wisconsin have been fighting a vicious right-wing governor over the rights of everyday working people to organize and sit down across from management at the bargaining table and have a say about their pay and working conditions.

We in New York City are battling to save our jobs, our pensions, our benefits and our civil service system from a billionaire mayor intent on giving away as much of the government as he can to private businesses as he destroys our rights.

Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the current struggles in Wisconsin, New York and across the country are about basic human rights. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died fighting for these rights in 1968 in Memphis, where he helped members of our national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, win their battle for human dignity and union representation.

We are fighting these attacks on our rights from California to Maine in an economy devastated by Wall Street greed, with governors and mayors using budget problems as a smokescreen for ideological assaults on public services and public employees.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker first gave huge tax breaks to big business and then blamed his budget gaps on the cost of employee benefits. The workers offered economic concessions, but he went for their throats anyway with the all-out assault on their rights.

Mayor gets more money, still cuts jobs

Here, the mayor announced in November that he had to cut agency budgets

12 percent, wipe out thousands of jobs and lay off employees because of looming budget deficits and the cost of pensions and health benefits, which he called excessive. Now it is clear that New York City's problem is not really a lack of money.

• Although improving revenue handed him an extra $2 billion, Bloomberg didn't cancel one layoff in his February budget plan. He wants us to "share the burden," but he didn't ask his private consultants and contractors to reduce their exorbitant fees a penny - not even when the city's total contracting costs ballooned by $600 million in the last fiscal year.
• DC 37 showed that the city is neglecting at least $200 million in recurring business taxes, but the mayor has done nothing to collect this available revenue. Since he became mayor, the value of tax-exempt property has increased from $17 billion to $40 billion. Even strip clubs get tax giveaways, and one Queens parking garage that was classified as a charity escaped taxes of $1.5 million a year.
• The administration wants to throw away money privatizing parking meters and selling off their $150-million-a-year revenue stream. Chicago lost billions of dollars in a similar scheme. (See Privatize Meters? Fuggetaboutit!)
Labor and public employees are under attack like never before. And we are fighting back like never before. We are not waiting any longer to start negotiating a new economic contract, and together with AFSCME, we have kicked off a broad fightback campaign. You can read more about this mobilization on pages 13-20 of this PEP.

We have always been a union of activists and now - with our rights, our jobs and our pensions on the line - I am urging members to participate more than ever before. You can volunteer to board a union bus to Albany on Lobby Day, Tuesday, May 3, and you can join our new Fightback Volunteer Team by calling the Political Action Department at 212-815-1550. Sign on for union e-mail alerts at www.dc37.net.

In June, we will hold a massive demonstration at City Hall. I am looking forward to seeing you there, because this is the biggest fight of our lives.