Public Employee Press

Letters to the editor

Retiree blasts MTA on cuts in bus service

By the time you read this, many thousands of New Yorkers will have lost their needed bus services throughout the city. Despite loud protests at town hall meetings, and signed petitions delivered to elected officials, the MTA has blatantly ignored the needs of all of us who rely on buses to get around in this densely populated city.

Bemoaning the prospects of probable termination of our weekend express bus service in Brooklyn with fellow passengers one Sunday in May, the conversation was filled with the stories of upcoming travel hardships. The MTA is supposed to serve the needs of all New Yorkers, especially the needs of those elderly and disabled people who cannot ride the trains.

One of our bus drivers picketed, with other Transport Workers Union Local 100 members, at the home of Jay Walder, head of the MTA, in early May. He told us that after the event, several million dollars was found by the MTA. Surely the MTA executives can find funds to halt these drastic cuts.

Now is the time to come together with the TWU and support their efforts to restore the budget cuts. We must all acknowledge that there is a vital connection between the needs of the public and the jobs of the TWU workers who serve those needs.

— Joan Klips
DC 37 Retiree


Why are we in Afghanistan? Local 1549 says to leave now

With the death toll of U.S. soldiers topping 1,000 and layoffs and service cuts afflicting states and cities nationwide, Local 1549's Political Action Committee and Delegates voted June 7 and June 8 to urge our government to get out of Afghanistan now and redirect the war spending to domestic needs.

Before they voted, members of the PAC watched a short video titled, "Why Are We in Afghanistan?"

Director Michael Zweig points out the enormous cost of the war in money and lives - military and civilian, American and Afghan - and questions the basis of the war, especially since it seems Osama bin Laden is no longer in Afghanistan.

Zweig ties the war to the 70 U.S. foreign interventions since 1945 and says the goals include U.S. geo-strategic dominance in Central Asia - a region of increasing military importance, growing oil production and desirable natural resources - and President Obama's aim to avoid losing a war he inherited from Bush.

The Afghan war has cost the U.S. over $250 billion since 2001, and President Obama is requesting $33 billion more for 30,000 additional troops and a "make or break" offensive. Zweig, who heads the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York in Stony Brook, shows graphically how we could have used that money for domestic needs.

With illustrations by the great labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki, the video constitutes an engrossing challenge to the war. The 28-minute DVD and the 11-minute condensed version are circulating widely among the increasing number of unions questioning the war.

At the Web site www.WhyAreWeIn-Afghanistan.org you can see the video, order the DVD for $9.95 and get more information. Copies of this video and "Rethink Afghanistan" by acclaimed filmmaker Robert Greenwald are available for members and locals to borrow in the DC 37 Education Fund Library, Room 211.

— Ken Nash, Librarian
DVD review mail and media


A letter the New York Post refused to print Post

The New York Post did not print the following letter from a union shop steward:

It is unfair to characterize the city payroll as obscene. What is obscene is the $9.2 BILLION, or approximately 15% of the city's overall budget, that the city spent on private contractors. That's right, my fellow New York taxpayers, your current local government spends that much on private contractors.

So let's shed some light on NYC's "dirty little secret."

What makes the $9.2 billion even dirtier is that the workers who do the work are paid a relatively small percentage of the outside contractors' price.

In my opinion, the real question is "Who do the owners of these private firms know?"

The "obscene" city payroll that you criticize is the result of hard work, sacrifices (including contractual sacrifices of the past) and negotiations between the mayor's office and New York City's civil service unions.

— Eugene Olmstead
Local 2627


"Has Wall St. shared the sacrifice?" he asks

Gov. Paterson calls for New York's public employee unions to "share in the sacrifice" that all New Yorkers are enduring in this fiscal crisis.

Please, Mr. Paterson, stop with this nonsense! Have the Wall Street recipients of six-figure bonuses done so? Has the majority of private sector employees received a pay reduction? And what about those State legislators? The answer is no, no, and no!

It would be equitable for the governor to start at the very top with the super-wealthy, not working-class employees.

Nonunion employees in the private sector are enjoying today many rights and privileges that unions fought for in the past. Unions protect the "average Joe," the working class, not the wealthy!

State employees and the unions that represent them are not to blame for the current fiscal crisis, and thus should not be punished for it. They are being treated as scapegoats for the mistakes of the greedy banking industry and Wall Street. I say thank goodness for the unions!

— Robert DiMeo
Rent Examiner, Local 1359


The untold news

News that never gets exposure is that the average NYC employee pension for DC 37 workers is around $30,000 a year! Try living in this city on $30,000. Yes, there are abuses in the pension system, but to just spotlight extreme cases misleads the public and fans their ire.

These cases are often management's responsibility for not enforcing their own rules, such as overtime limits.

Since 401(k)s are a perilous way to save for retirement, criticizing unions for negotiating solid fixed benefit pensions for their members is just an attempt to divide and conquer to exploit workers.

To the private sector I say: Don't scapegoat us for the economic problems brought on by the under-regulated financial institutions that caused the current financial debacle.

— Mark Shoenfield
Local 2627