Voting Power - Use It or Lose It Print E-mail

Our union’s greatest power is turning out a huge vote in the upcoming primaries on Tuesday, Sept. 14, and the General Election on Tuesday, Nov. 2. This election year is especially critical to our survival, as the economy continues to falter. Ignoring the Wall Street greed that triggered the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression in 1929, misguided elected officials are trying to plug the holes in their budgets by calling for givebacks from hard-working public employees, who have carried the burden of doing more with less since well before the financial crisis of 2008.

 



“We must defend our negotiated rights with all our power,” said President Gregory Floyd. “Our greatest power is turning out 24,000 members to vote on Election Day for candidates that will protect our interests.”

A recent National Compensation Survey belies increasing claims that public employees’ compensation is “too generous.” The survey found that public employees earn 7.4 percent less than employees with comparable skills in the private sector, even with the cost of benefits factored in. Separately, a study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that when such factors as education and work experience are accounted for (including pensions and health coverage), state and local employees earn about 11 to 12 percent less than comparable private-sector workers.

The decades-old war on public employees has intensified as more jobs and homes are lost. “But the attacks have little basis in reality,” writes Amy Traub, research director, Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, in her article “‘Coddled’ Public Employees Make Less than the Private Sector.” Traub emphasizes that “at its heart, the scapegoating of public employees is an insidious way to divide public and private-sector workers who share many of the same interests.”