Brothers and Sisters
As of this time their is not a list of people who will be affected by the layoff. The list may in fact be weeks in the making. As soon as we have a confirmed list we will advise those members. Please during these difficult times do not listen to or spread rumors.
In Solidarity,
Keith Love
Business Agent
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Myriam Marquez speaks with Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho about education funding.
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Brothers and Sisters,
Update on rally for tonight. Please do not bring whistles, horns, drums etc.. This is an indoor rally!!
I look forward to seeing all of you there tonight at 6 pm.
Fraternally
Keith Love
Business Agent
DCSMEC
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By KEVIN G. HALL
From state legislatures to Congress to tea party rallies, a vocal backlash is rising against what are perceived as too-generous retirement benefits for state and local government workers. However, that widespread perception doesn’t match reality.
A close look at state and local pension plans across the nation, and a comparison of them to those in the private sector, reveals a more complicated story. However, the short answer is that there’s simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim.
Pension contributions from state and local employers aren’t blowing up budgets. They amount to just 2.9 percent of state spending, on average, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators. The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College puts the figure a bit higher at 3.8 percent.
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Please vote.
Wall Street Journal: Question of the Day Should state employees have collective-bargaining rights?
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Sen. John Thrasher, former state GOP chairman, looks like he has filed a bill (SB830) to starve unions like the Florida Education Association, SEIU, AFL-CIO, firefighters, police unions or AFSCME by banning the Democratic-leaning organizations from using salary deductions for political purposes. The legislation also says any “public employer may not deduct or collect” union dues, etc. Lastly, it says that any public employee who didn’t specifically authorize the use of his money could be entitled to a partial refund.
The bill doesn’t seem to go as far as Wisconsin’s by ending collective bargaining rights in Florida, though in a right-to-work state there’s only so much union bargaining that can take place. Still, the language about union dues sure looks like it’s right out of the playbook of the tea party and Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker (who incidentally is not a high-speed rail fan, either).
Here are some excerpts from Thrasher’s bill, SB 830, which doesn’t seem to have a house sponsor. Yet.
“Deductions may not be made for purposes of political activity, including contributions to a candidate, political party, political committee, committee of continuous existence, electioneering communications organization, or organization exempt from taxation under s. 501(c)(4) or s. 527 of the Internal Revenue Code.”
“A public employer may not deduct or collect the dues, uniform assessments, fines, penalties, or special assessments of an employee organization from the compensation of any person employed by the public employer…”
“Unless an employee has executed a written authorization, the employee is entitled to a pro rata refund of any dues, uniform assessments, fines, penalties, or special assessments paid by the employee and used by the labor organization of which the employee is a member to make contributions or expenditures, as defined in s. 106.011. The written authorization must be executed by the employee separately for each fiscal year of the labor organization and shall be accompanied with a detailed account, provided by the labor organization, of all contributions and expenditures made by the labor organization in the preceding 24 months.”
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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
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Gov. Rick Scott on the campaign trail — and again shortly after he was elected — vowed to push for one of the nation’s most expansive school voucher programs.
But Scott — who last fall called for a “new era in education” — acknowledged on Tuesday that he doesn’t plan to push through his ambitious plan during the 2011 session.
Scott said that he still believes parents do a better job of choosing schools, but he said that for this year his ‘focus’ will be to “make sure we have more charter schools going forward.”
“We have a lot of choice now, I want to expand that choice,” Scott said.
Read more —-> http://fltrib.com/scott-wont-push-voucher-expansion-year
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TALLAHASSEE — – A leading Senate Republican has filed a bill that could strip unions of some of their political strength, barring payroll deduction for union dues and prohibiting dues from being used for political activity without written consent.
“I think it’s a freedom issue for people who now are conscripted to having their money taken out of their paychecks,” said Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine. “I think it’s more of a thing where they can volunteer to decide what they want to do.”
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EUSTIS – At a highly partisan tea-party event on Monday, Gov. Rick Scott unveiled his first budget proposal, one that makes sweeping changes to state government by slashing billions in taxes and spending.
Scott proposed spending almost $66 billion — $4.6 billion less than this year’s budget. Scott also wants to eliminate 7 percent of the state’s government jobs, which would mean about 6,700 state-worker layoffs. He wants even more cuts the following year.
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