Public Employee Press

Union to Albany: “Not on our backs!’’

DC 37 joined thousands of union activists from across New York State at the annual AFSCME Lobby Day in Albany

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

As state legislators voted on the governor’s 2010 fiscal plan, 900 DC 37 members joined over 1,700 activists from the six New York AFSCME affiliates March 31 at an Albany Lobby Day rally protesting the budget’s cuts.

“Governor Paterson needs to decide whether he is going to be like Pataki or like President Obama,” boomed keynote speaker Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. “An on-time budget is not as important as one that works, and provides a safety net for the state’s most vulnerable groups.”

The members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees told state lawmakers: “Raise taxes on the rich and don’t balance the budget on the backs of the middle class!”

Lobby Day speakers included elected public officials who stood with the union — U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith — and labor leaders Lillian Roberts of DC 37 and Denis Hughes of the state AFL-CIO.

No to layoffs, wage cuts

To close the state’s $17 billion deficit, the governor had demanded that state workers reopen their contract and cancel a negotiated 3 percent salary increase under the threat of layoffs for 8,900 state workers, possibly including DC 37 members.


His plan also included massive, disproportionate cuts to health care that left shortfalls of $430 million for the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. and $100 million for public education and decimated social service safety net programs.

“We did not create this mess, Wall Street greed did!” said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. “We cannot be asked to shoulder these losses and pay for their bailouts. And we will not let the mayor pick our pockets when he’s contracting out $9 billion in city services.”

Roberts, DC 37’s Associate Director Oliver Gray and Political Director Wanda Williams — along with dozens of local presidents and hundreds of union activists — turned up DC 37’s lobbying efforts that day, helping to win restorations of some of the cuts the governor had called for.

Union victories

Williams said pressure from the union and individual locals resulted in several victories for DC 37 to protect jobs and public services.

• A Tier 5 proposal was removed from the budget process;
  
  
• Lobbying efforts helped save the jobs of 300 Substance Abuse Prevention and Intervention Specialists at the Dept of Education. Lobbying by DC 37 and Local 372, including a special SAPIS Lobby Day on March 17, paid off as the in-school drug counseling program received almost $17 million in state aid to prevent layoffs and provide training and workforce development.
  
  
• DC 37 also was successful in getting $13 million of a proposed $18 million cut restored to libraries across the state.
  
  
• $60 million was restored to the city’s Emergency Medical Service.
  
  
• A proposed $50 to $80 fee on retirees’ health benefits was removed from the budget talks.
  
  
• Lobbying efforts also ended the governor’s plan to hit health and welfare benefit claims with a $1 administrative surcharge that would have cost the DC37 Health and Security Plan $2 million.

But not all the harmful cuts were canceled.

HHC was cut out of transition funding, and to make up the difference the agency is cutting staff and services at hospitals — such as Harlem, Jacobi, Metropolitan, Elmhurst and Kings County — in communities with high needs.

Additionally, the presidents of locals 420, 768 and 1549, whose members include many HHC employees, lobbied state Senate and Assembly members on the legislative floor March 31 to request an increase in the DISH funds for hospitals that serve a disproportionate share of poor patients. They also pressed for new legislation to fund health care for the 450,000 uninsured residents who are treated at HHC hospitals each year.

While the federal government and New York City each contribute $150 million per year in DISH money, Williams said the state does not. “We felt abandoned, since the state failed to recognize the New York City population’s needs and the absence of funding for these communities,” she said. DC 37 is lobbying to restore state funding to safety net programs.