AFSCME Members Rally to Save Public Services
February 25th, 2010 | James Parks
While state and local governments and school districts across the country struggle with budget deficits, AFSCME members are standing up to tell their elected representatives that raising revenues is the best solution to a budget crisis instead of cutting critical public services just when they are needed the most.
State and local governments and school districts have a $178 billion budget shortfall this year alone.
In Illinois, more than 3,000 activists, including hundreds of members of AFSCME Council 31, rallied at the state Capitol rotunda in Springfield this month to demand that lawmakers pass legislation to increase the individual income tax rate and expand the state’s sales tax base.
AFSCME members in Washington State lobbied lawmakers to preserve state services.
Meanwhile, some 1,500 AFSCME members from throughout New York State demonstrated and met with legislators in Albany earlier this month to find a fair way to protect essential public services.
AFSCME President Gerald McEntee told the New York State workers:
Elected leaders are on the verge of destroying vital public services and putting more people out of work. They’re jeopardizing the health and safety of the people and our communities.
In Maryland, a delegation of AFSCME members carried boxes of “Budget Fight Back” cards to their lawmakers in January. Signed by more than 3,000 state employees, the cards propose a plan to generate more than $2 billion in revenue to close a budget gap, including drawing on the state’s rainy day fund, expanding the sales tax to more services and increasing gas and alcohol taxes.
You can read more about efforts by AFSCME members in other states to save public services on AFSCME’s website here.
*This article originally appeared in AFL-CIO blog on February 24, 2010. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: James Parks had his first encounter with unions at Gannett’s newspaper in Cincinnati when his colleagues in the newsroom tried to organize a unit of The Newspaper Guild. He saw firsthand how companies pull out all the stops to prevent workers from forming a union. He is a journalist by trade, and worked for newspapers in five different states before joining the AFL-CIO staff in 1990. He has also been a seminary student, drug counselor, community organizer, event planner, adjunct college professor and county bureaucrat. His proudest career moment, though, was when he served, along with other union members and staff, as an official observer for South Africa’s first multiracial elections. Author photo by Joe Kekeris
Related Posts:
Tags: AFSCME, Gerald McEntee, James Parks, Taxes
February 25th, 2010 at 6:08 pm
If you are someone who thinks that your workplace could use some more vending machines, check this place out. I highly recommend them.
http://yovia.com/blogs/customlosangelesvending/2010/02/25/absolute-vending-in-la-offers-750-snacks-to-choose-from-so-there-is-something-for-everyone/
February 27th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
It is a pity that more people don’t realize just how inefficent and inept government workers are. Then they unionize to protect the jobs that they get paid way too much to do so poorly.
All government jobs that can be need to be outsourced to the private sector where the profit motive drives effiency and productivity.
If anybody believes that civil service protections raise quality or productivity look at the post office, congress, FEMA, the Labor Department, OSHA and so on down the line.
Private industry has proved over and over again that it can’t do alsmost any job better, faster and cheaper than the government.
But to champion people on the public teat who want more money stolen from taxpaers to make there cushy jobs secure is enough to make a working man ill (of course if I don’t work I don’t get paid).
And school teachers, give me a break. I taught as a volenteer for four years, first period every day. I taught introduction to business at a local high school. Teachers work half time. For half time a 32K to 45K salary is pretty good money. Well above average. If they want to make a full professional salary put in 3000 hours a year not 900 to 1200 hours they do now.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Charles,
Thanks for the textbook, free-market mumbo-jumbo. Too bad for you there is a real world everyone else lives in.
To think that the private sector is ‘better’ is ridiculous. We have seen how the private sector behaves in terms of ‘efficiency’ when de-regulated ( meaning on its own terms). Its awful. Have you been following the health care debate? Are you aware of the practices of the health insurance companies? Congress, with all its faults, is still at least being asked (no matter if dems or reps) to put into law things like covering pre-existing conditions (which are used to make profit).
Look at the war – you think Blackwater is better than the Marine Corps?
Even the post office, I mean come on, what is your problem with the post office? Need your mail on sundays?
To top it all off, you mention congress as an example of inefficiency – a congress which has 5 lobbyists for every congressman to ensure special interests rule the day…
In short: you know not as much as you claim to know.
March 11th, 2010 at 11:58 am
[...] AFSCME Members Rally to Save Public Services [...]