For two straight days, AFSCME members demonstrated outside MnSCU’s board meeting in St. Paul. The message was simple: Stop giving bonuses to college executives at the same time campuses are raising tuition for students, laying off front-line workers, and freezing the pay of workers who still have jobs.

Watch AFSCME Director of Research Kerry Korpi stand up to attacks on public employees and our pensions during an appearance on CNBC. At issue: should states cut public pensions to balance ballooning budgets?

You can cast an absentee ballot now if you will be on vacation or otherwise unable to get to your polling place for the Aug. 10 primary election. Here's how.

International Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders was sworn in as AFSCME’s 39th International Convention concluded in Boston. Click headline to read more.

 

Delegates to the 39th International Convention of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, (AFSCME), today elected Lee Saunders to be the next Secretary-Treasurer of the union representing 1.6 million public service workers.

AFSCME activists rallied Wednesday on Boston Common, in solidarity with Council 93, to prevent the loss of critical public services and to pass the jobs bill now stalled in Congress.

President Gerald W. McEntee used his keynote address on June 28 at the 2010 AFSCME Convention to demand that Congress pass a critical jobs bill — and that politicians be held accountable for their promises to working people. View video below or visit the Convention website here.

Nominations are now open for Council 5’s annual Achievement Awards. Here’s how to nominate individuals and locals.

Negotiations Committee Meeting 4-27-10

Star Tribune Counterpoint

By Eliot Seide

Every day, more Minnesotans are losing their jobs, their homes and their health care. When these victims of the poor economy need help, it’s unionized public workers who come to their rescue. We’re their life preserver, not their anchor, as Katherine Kersten suggests (Public sector: An anchor as we sink, 2/14/10).

We’re the blue-collar workers who take care of South St. Paul, while Gov. Pawlenty cuts his hometown. We feed grandma, while he forces her nursing home to close. We staff the emergency rooms, while he cuts hospitals to the bone. We help minds soar, while he crowds classrooms, hikes tuition and closes libraries.

Rest assured that our union wages and benefits are not the cause of the state deficit. AFSCME Council 5 is a union of 43,000 public and non-profit workers, who earn $38,000 a year on average. Most of us are struggling paycheck to paycheck with frozen wages, just like the average Minnesota worker who also earns $38,000. We’re buying necessities, not luxuries, and that’s the kind of spending that will pull Minnesota out of this consumer-driven recession.

Public workers are your friends, your neighbors and your customers. When Gov. Pawlenty cuts a public employee’s job, Main Street loses a customer. As more stores shutter their doors, the last thing we need is more layoffs.

How Minnesota responds to this recession is a test of who we are as a people. Kersten and Gov. Pawlenty want to gut essential services, while protecting Minnesota’s wealthiest citizens and corporations from paying their fair share of taxes. This failed plan puts the rich in lifeboats as everyone else sinks.

Worse yet, Pawlenty’s new budget kicks vulnerable people while they’re down. He denies our poorest neighbors the health care they need to survive. He slashes Meals on Wheels for hungry seniors. And he cuts personal care assistants for people with disabilities. Meanwhile, he proposes tax cuts for corporations, which will add $268 million to the deficit.

Unemployed Minnesotans deserve a governor who cares more about their next job than his next job. They deserve a leader with the courage to do what’s right – protect families hurt by the recession and put our state on the path to recovery.

Top economists on the left and right agree that investing in vital public services is one of the best ways to save and create jobs. They know that every dollar invested in public services grows the economy by $1.41 – and that helps put all Americans back to work. They estimate that at least 1.2 million jobs were saved by President Obama’s stimulus, which Pawlenty calls a “Ponzi scheme on the Potomac” and Kersten dismisses as “funny money.” Experts disagree; they say government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy, according to a recent survey by USA Today.

Fewer workers, shorter hours and lower wages are warning signs that it’s time for an emergency jobs program.

A jobs program isn’t a slow drip stimulus or another Wall Street bailout. It should avoid corporate tax cuts, and instead consist of measures that directly save or add jobs. That should include aid to state and local governments to prevent layoffs and maintain vital services, and it should create jobs by repairing and building infrastructure.

All of this will cost money and there’s a fair way to pay for it. By restoring tax fairness, lawmakers can raise the revenue to remain an above-average state and nation. No one ever cut their way to greatness. Great leaders invest in education, health care, public safety, transportation and good jobs that can support a family. That’s the foundation of an economy where prosperity is shared by everyone.

Eliot Seide is the director of AFSCME Council 5, a union of 43,000 workers who advocate for excellence in public services.