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

State workers in West Virginia spent Presidents Day staging a rally at the capitol to ask for a $1,000 cost-of-living raise and better working conditions. Meanwhile, workers in California hope a bill advances that would ease some of their furlough pain.

As part of a plan to deal with California’s budget gap, state workers have given up three days of work per month, essentially cutting the pay of some 200,000 state employees by 14 percent. The future is uncertain for these workers, as Gov. Schwarzenegger has proposed to end the layoffs come June, but cut pay and payroll by 5 percent each.

The California state Senate Public Employment and Retirement Committee will hear the bill today. It is among more than two dozen bills aimed at fueling job creation in the state, and one of those that’s been received tepidly by Republicans, who want a jobs bill more focused on creating jobs in the private sector. It would affect jobs in revenue- and tax-collecting jobs.

The rally in West Virginia focused on a small cost-of-living increase and a smaller caseload for workers in the Department of Health & Human Resources.

“There’s bigger issues to deal with, but we’re having to beg for $1,000 a year,” said Jay Miner, of the Bateman Chapter of the West Virginia Public Workers Union, UE Local 170. The demonstrators presented a 2,000-word petition of support to the governor. They also face health insurance premium hikes.

The Charleston, W.Va., public service workers are among those around the country have been staging protests in recent weeks in response to the looming threats of pay cuts, furloughs, retirement benefit losses, insurance increases and spending cutbacks that affect their jobs.

On February 4, county, city and schools workers in Detroit marched downtown to demonstrate their opposition to furloughs and pay cuts. The protest was spearheaded by AFSCME, which represents about 60,000 Michigan workers, after Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano announced that workers would have to take a day each week off without first negotiating with the union.

Furloughs are an increasingly common tactic being used by both government entities and companies to improve the bottom line. But it puts workers in perilous conditions because they often can’t apply for unemployment.

Jacqueline Price, a 12-year county veteran, told The Michigan Citizen:

It’s terrible. Ficano is calling a lay-off a furlough. We can’t file for unemployment, and we are only working 32 hours a week so we are no longer considered full-time employees.

Detroit city employees are facing a possible 10-percent pay cut. The demonstration in Michigan came just days after public-sector workers stormed the capitol in Santa Fe, N.M., to show their opposition to a proposed 2-percent pay cut for state employees and teachers.

*This post originally appeared in Working in These Times on February 16, 2010. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Emily Udell is a writer for Angie’s List Magazine in Indianapolis. In 2009, she finished a stint drinking bourbon and covering breaking news for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. Her eclectic media career also includes time at the Associated Press, Punk Planet (R.I.P.), The Daily Southtown in southwest Chicago, and Radio Prague in the Czech Republic. She co-hosted and co-produced In These Times’ radio show “Fire on the Prairie” from 2003 to 2006.