Public Employee Press

Letters to the editor

Palin was wrong on community organizers
In response to Governor Palin’s recent remarks about Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer:

I feel that the only type of service that is regarded by some in our nation as truly valuable is service in our military. Governor Sarah Palin’s recent remarks dismissing Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer seemed to perpetuate that perspective.

As a community organizer, an advocate for children with disabilities, and as a parent of a child with disabilities, I understand that defending our country is done in many ways. It is found in the fight to preserve public education and public libraries, in the battle to protect our civil liberties, and in the movement for peace and bringing our troopshome.

Community organizers battle racial and gender discrimination, struggle for fair wages and affordable housing and fight to reform our health care system.

They also battle to prevent discrimination against the disabled. Change does not start at the top. It is driven up from the bottom by people who are looked through, and by those within the community who give them a voice. Through the voice of the community organizer, the overlooked are elevated. The proud Americans who serve in our disenfranchised communities to provide that voice to families facing seemingly insurmountable barriers to success are our nation’s unsung heroes.

—Maria Garcia
Local 3621

Save a life
As a heart transplant recipient (May 2000), I’d like to thank you for the article highlighting Steve Archer’s liver transplant in the October PEP.

The shortage of donors and the importance of registering organ donors is great.

At Metrotech in Brooklyn (where I work for DoITT), the Business Improvement District holds a health fair. For the last two years, I and other volunteers of the New York Organ Donor Network (NYODN) have had a table at the fair encouraging visitors to the table to enroll in the New York State organ donor registry. Would it be possible to have an NYODN table at a large DC 37 gathering?

Could we have NYS Organ Donor Registry forms included with our paychecks once a year, just as we receive brochures from the United Way, and the American Cancer Society?

I am willing to assist in accomplishing any of these goals.

—Steve Feldheim
Local 2627

Editor’s Note: To promote these concerns, you could get involved with the DC 37 Health and Nutrition Committee. Just call Committee Chair Michelle Keller at 212-815-1375.


Stop privatization
I applaud your coverage (September) of contract issues, privatization and the plight of the Sewage Treatment Workers. Six years without a raise in today’s economy is a sad state of affairs.

If privatizing jobs that civil servants are doing is affecting contract talks, the politicians in charge should be asked why. I’m sure all 56 locals could give examples of this.

I don’t see police and firefighting jobs being privatized. Keep the pressure on the city to stop privatization. The future of civil servants is at stake.

—George Maniatakos
Local 1322

Drug benefit now in nursing homes
It is my feeling that your rule that makes prescription drug benefits unavailable to people in nursing homes or similar in-patient care facilities is wrong.

Most patients like this are retirees well along in years. Why penalize them? The rules and regulations should be adjusted to benefit all the members and I hope you will work in this direction.  It’s time for a change.

—Elias Leibowitz

Editor’s note: The trustees recently amended the rules of the DC 37 Health and Security Plan to permit members in nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care facilities to be coveredby our drug benefit, so long as they are not covered by other plans or insurance that would provide primary coverage. The trustees recognized that the old reason for excluding them (that Medicaid/Medicare provided this coverage) was no longer valid since many membersare now paying out of their ownpockets.


PEP article an inspiration, says economist
The following letter was received by PEP Associate Editor Alfredo Alvarado:

I would like to take this opportunity to say what a wonderful article “College of New Rochelle Grads Make a Difference” from the July-August 2008 PEP turned out to be.

I was in New York last month for a family event, when one of my relatives, who is a DC 37 member, told me she read the article, and it inspired her to look into going back to school. The different profiles demonstrated the broad appeal that the College of New Rochelle has to offer. Seeing “Stormin’ Norman’s” profile also brings back dear memories of DC 37 and activists like Norman.

Great article, good job. Thanks.

—Zachary J. Ramsey
Labor Economist, AFSCME

Obama means hope
The election of Barack Obama is so remarkable that I think I am living in a parallel universe. Indeed the last eight years have seemed to me like a “new dark age” and that my sense of what America was had gone through a meat grinder.

Today there is a new sense of freedom and a sense of hope for all of us. Who could ask for anything more?

—Marvin Lutenberg
Retiree

The trickle UP theory
While Wall Street was crashing I met a car dealer. He said his business was doing pretty well compared to others. I asked why and he said it was because so many of his customers were city public employees.

The best way to improve the local economy is to hire workers and pay a living wage so they can spend money, which helps business. New workers paying taxes will increase government revenue.

If private companies cannot hire workers, then the city should. This would also help improve needed services and cut down on the need for unemployment insurance and welfare, thus saving taxpayers those costs.

The way government should raise revenues to expand services and employment is making the rich pay their fair share of taxes. Back in the 1950s under President Eisenhower millionaires paid a 91 percent rate on income. Today it is at around 30 percent thanks to tax cuts favoring the rich.

Today’s billionaires can afford it. It is in part because of their excesses we are in the economic mess we are in today.

—Ralph Palladino
2nd Vice President, Local 1549

No third term
As a union member who is very dissatisfied with the way Mayor Bloomberg has been treating us city workers, I am writing to voice my concern that he has the gall to want to seek a third term in office.

Bloomberg’s arrogance knows no bounds; term limits was voted for by us voters twice. To see that he wants to ignore our wishes and use his money to try to seek a third term is infuriating.

Where is our raise? Any time there is a financial crisis in this city, we the city workers are expected to make sacrifices. Enough is enough.
I ask Lillian Roberts: Please use all of your energy to stop this man.

—Linda Faggs
Senior Hospital Care Investigator, Local 371