Greetings Sisters and Brothers,
As the opening bell of the 2011 Legislative Session approaches, the Florida AFL-CIO is preparing all of our various communication outlets to ensure you have the best, up to date information about what is transpiring at the Capitol, how it impacts your membership and most importantly, how you can get involved.
· Our Legislative Update is a weekly, print publication that will be mailed to all of our affiliates and activists with detailed information on the legislation we are monitoring and how it is progressing through the legislative process. These will also be posted each week on our website. The first Legislative Update will print on or around March 18th.
· Our E Messenger twice weekly electronic newsletter resumes next week and will be used to keep you up to speed on what is going on in the legislature as well as political, economic and Labor news from around the state and the country.
· We will issue Legislative Alerts via email using all of our various databases whenever action is needed from our local leaders, members and activists.
· We are gearing up our Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media capacity to build a strong online community that can react quickly and decisively when needed on important legislation.
In addition to the various communication outlets above, we will also be sending the below Legislative Briefs to all of our affiliates each Friday. These will offer very brief outlines as to what happened during the days prior and updates as to what is coming in the weeks ahead. We encourage you to forward these to your members, friends and family as we work this session to beat back the attacks on our workers, retirees and their families.
Solidarity,
Rich Templin
Florida AFL-CIO
Legislative Brief
A quick look at the Florida Legislature’s activities for the week of:
2/07/11
Pensions: The move to dramatically change Florida’s public pension systems continued to progress this week. Senator Jeremy Ring, chair of the Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee is leading the process in the Senate. The biggest changes to the pension systems currently being considered thus far include:
· Forcing all Florida Retirement System (FRS) members to contribute up to 5% towards their pension. This would essentially equal a 5% pay cut.
· Closing the Defined Benefit pension plan to all new hires and place them in a Defined Contribution type plan (401k etc.).
· Make changes to the Premium Tax allocation so that local governments can use those funds for purposes other than pension enhancements for first responders.
The Florida AFL-CIO has established the Public Employee Coalition with representatives from all of Florida’s public sector unions regardless of affiliation with the State Federation. This coalition has been working with members of the House and Senate, has coordinated 4-weeks of testimony in Senator Ring’s committee and has ongoing meetings with editorial boards across the state. On Tuesday, the Florida AFL-CIO coordinated testimony before the Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee, capping off four weeks of testimony from all of the major public sector unions in Florida. Dwight Mattingly, President of ATU 1577 and Rich Templin, Legislative & Political Director of the Florida AFL-CIO presented summary finding regarding the health and stability of Florida’s public sector pensions, the perils of the changes the legislature is contemplating and the impact they would have on Florida’s public sector workers and the state budget. Our coalition efforts have had great success in pushing back against this attack on our pensions but there is a long way to go. Bill language is expected the week of February 21st. There may be public hearings that week in Tallahassee and we will need as much participation as possible so please keep an eye out for announcements.
Unemployment Insurance: The Florida House moved quickly on bill (released only late last week) that radically changes Florida’s Unemployment Insurance system to the detriment of Florida’s workers. The House Economic Development and Tourism Subcommittee voted out
HB 7005 with a 7-4 party line vote on Thursday, February 10th. The major components of this bill include:
· Making it easier to lay off or terminate workers without providing unemployment benefits
· Placing additional hurdles in front of workers trying to get benefits
· Reducing the weeks of unemployment benefits from 26 to 20 weeks with the maximum being as low as 12 weeks in times of low unemployment
· A reduction in the “Experience Rating” tax rate that businesses pay into the unemployment trust fund by 10%
As the recession began and the unemployment rate increased so did the taxes paid by businesses to cover the workers they laid off. Business lobbyists succeeded for the past two years in delaying paying those taxes so now the Unemployment Trust Fund is insolvent. It is time to pay the bill but these same lobbyists are now using the trust fund insolvency to permanently weaken unemployment system so that they will never have to pay benefits for the workers they lay-off. This amounts to punishing the victims of this recession in order to give a bailout to some of Florida’s most powerful and profitable businesses.
A similar albeit less drastic bill (SB 728) has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Nancy Detert, Chair of the Commerce and Tourism Committee. The Senator has pledged to take a measured approach and carefully weigh all of the options before proceeding so no vote was held in its first committee hearing on February 3rd.
Rich Templin, Ph.D.
Legislative & Political Director
Florida AFL-CIO
(850) 224-6926 / (850) 566-4348 cell
Twitter:rtemplin
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” – Paulo Freire