Pensions Aren’t the Problem for State Budgets
This is a crosspost by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.
Virtually everyone agrees that our nation faces a retirement security crisis, but the Journal last week published a shameful op-ed calling for the elimination of pensions for nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and others who still have them. Having punched private-sector workers retirement in the gut, these folks won’t be happy until the whole concept of a secure retirement for working Americans is a thing of the past.
The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding. Read the rest of this entry »
6,000 Bay Area Nurses on One-Day Strike
Concerned over the erosion of quality of care and cuts to patient protections, some 6,000 nurses have been on a one-day strike today at California’s second largest private hospital and at one of its most profitable corporate hospital chains.
The members of National Nurses United include 2,000 RNs at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and Miller Children’s Hospital in Long Beach, and 4,000 RNs who work at nine Bay Area facilities that are part of the Sutter Health corporation.
Michele Ross and Elsa Matos-Leal, both RNs, summed up why they took today’s action:
Despite hundreds of hours of talks, this corporation persists with the
same hard line — pushing more than 150 proposals aimed at the heart of our patient advocacy and eroding safety standards that protect our patients.Sutter, not a mom-and-pop grocery store, hardly needs the sweeping concessions. It has amassed more than $3.7 billion in profits the past six years. It pays salaries of more than $1 million a year to 20 top executives, most of whom received pay increases of more than 100 percent from 2005 to 2009 according to Sutter’s own public IRS filings.
Long Beach RNs say they have gotten no assurances from hospital management for safe RN-to-patient staffing at all times and oppose the hospital’s refusal to implement safe patient lift policies to prevent accidents to patients and injuries to nurses, despite enactment of a state law requiring such policy. Read the rest of this entry »
Nurses Top Gallup’s Honesty, Ethics Poll
Who do you trust? When it comes to honesty and ethics, most of us trust nurses, according to the annual Gallup poll on how people view various professions. The survey found that 84 percent rate nurses “very high” or “high” on honesty and ethical standards. That’s the 12th time in 13 years nurses have been ranked first.
Karen Higgins, RN, co-president of National Nurses United (NNU), says:
We hold that trust as a sacred bond with our patients and our communities.
At the bottom of the scale, with the most votes in the “very low” or “low” category in honesty and ethics? Lobbyists (62 percent) and members of Congress (64 percent). No shock there.
Click here for the full poll.
Massachusetts Workers Mobilize as Deficit Deadline Looms
AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report.
As the congressional Super Committee’s deadline for a federal deficit reduction plan nears, more than 2,600 teachers, ironworkers, construction workers, nurses and others took to the streets in Massachusetts in recent days with a single message: no cuts.
Labor leaders and workers across the state have petitioned Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to pledge to protect America’s workers from devastating cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and have been making their voices heard—through postcards, forums with their members of Congress, resolutions and even an electronic billboard or two.
“We’re here to say no cuts to Social Security, no cuts to Medicare, no cuts to Medicaid, no cuts to the Postal Service,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven Tolman told thousands of workers and seniors from across New England at the Wang Theater in Boston,
and we want it for you, we want it for us and we want it for our children and grandchildren.
Police Arrest 130, Tear Down First Aid Station at Occupy Chicago
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Over the weekend, Chicago police tore down a first aid station at Occupy Chicago, and nurses were among the 130 protesters arrested in a massive sweep against those taking a stance against Wall Street greed.
About 1,500 people gathered Saturday in Grant Park hoping to make it the movement’s permanent home, according to The Washington Post.
Along the way, marchers chanted “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” and held signs that read “Greed Sucks” and “No War But The Class War” while police on horses blocked them from walking on the street on Michigan Avenue, leaving them with just the sidewalks to occupy.
The protest was peaceful, but demonstrators were taken away one by one and handcuffed with white plastic ties. As the Post noted, some on the scene shouted: “This is what democracy looks like!”
National Taxi Workers Alliance Gets AFL-CIO Charter at Future of Work Event
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The National Taxi Workers Alliance made history when its leader, Bhairavi Desai, accepted the organization’s charter as a member of the AFL-CIO during an event today on “The Future of Work.” Highlighting the changing shape of the union movement, the event opened with remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Desai then took part in a panel discussion which included representatives of other labor organizations that represent workers who are either traditionally excluded from coverage by labor law, or for whom the changing shape of the economy means the protections they have on paper mean little.
Joining Desai were Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance; Justin Molito, director of organizing for the Writers Guild of America, East; and Bill Cruice, founding executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, NNU. The panel was rounded out by economist David Weil, a professor at Boston University, who discussed how changing business models affected the exercise of employee rights. Before the program began, dozens of exuberant taxi workers, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with ”Justice, Rights, Respect, Dignity” crowded around Solis, Trumka and Desai. Trumka said the taxi workers are:
an inspiring example of how working people are organizing even in the face of employment relations that have eroded all of our rights.
23,000 Nurses Take Stand for Patient Care
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From Santa Rosa to Fresno and from Sacramento to San Jose, 23,000 registered nurses walked picket lines, joined rallies and sent a strong message yesterday to three large employers that they will not accept reductions in patient services or cuts to nurses and other caregivers. The one-day strike by members of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU) ended this morning at 7 a.m. PT.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who joined nurses on the picket line at Sutter Alta Bates hospital in Berkeley, praised the RNs as “the last line of defense for patients.” Trumka said the 23,000 nurses who took a stand were joined by “millions of patients” and had the support of working people across the country.
The walkout affected Sutter Health and Kaiser Permanente, as well as Children’s Hospital in Oakland.
Nurses Sick over ‘Let Him Die’ Moment at Republican Debate
This week’s Republican debate has now achieved perverse fame for the “Let him die” moment that occurred when the audience cheered and applauded as Wolf Blitzer asked Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) whether society should just let a sick person die if he can’t afford health insurance.
As do all of us in the union movement, the National Nurses United (NNU) expressed revulsion at the cheering.
NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN, called the audience’s response “stunning.”
My first reaction is how far have we degenerated as a society? Everything we do is geared toward preventing illness, and getting people well. If no one cares whether our patients get well, what are we doing advocating for them and fighting for them?
A broader question, says NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, is:
one of national identity: Do we have—or even want—a country, a nation of common purpose and support—or just a collection of amoral individuals?
Nurses Demand a ‘Main Street Contract for the American People’
Nurses across the country, members of National Nurses United (NNU), are calling on elected leaders to enact a “Main Street Contract for the American People.”
NNU Co-President Jean Ross said the contract is a care plan to cure America. The plan is designed to stop economic decline and protect American families. It calls for jobs at living wages, guaranteed health care for all and equal access to quality education, schools, good housing, protection from hunger, a secure retirement for everyone, a clean and safe environment and a fair and just tax system in which Wall Street and those with the most wealth pay their fair share.
Greetings from Walkerville
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Phil Neuenfeldt, Wisconsin State AFL-CIO president, sends an update on the actions around Wisconsin’s Walkerville.
Day six of the Walkerville tent city protest has seen overwhelming support from Wisconsin workers, students and community members. Over the course of the week, thousands of Wisconsinites have gathered on the cement blocks lining the Capitol Square in order to call attention to Gov. Walker and his legislative allies’ destructive budget proposals—proposals which will cripple Wisconsin’s schools, health care system and communities.
Many have said that they are surrounding the Capitol to bear witness to their elected officials’ decisions and to let their Representatives know that the people of Wisconsin are preparing to take back their government back this summer.
“Walkerville is a way to focus the spotlight on Gov. Walker and Sen. Alberta Darling’s budget that will devastate higher education, public education and Wisconsin as we know it,” explained Michael Rosen, President of AFT Local 212, and professor at the Milwaukee Area Technical College. Rosen traveled to Walkerville on Wednesday to spend the night.
