DCSMEC NOTICE- Meeting information

by Admin on May 12, 2011

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

The location for our upcoming General meeting on May 17, 2011 at 4:30pm has changed to the Machinist Building, 4349 NW 36th Street, Miami, FL  33166.

Please mark your calendar!

Fraternally:
Keith Love
Business Agent

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Message from DCSMEC

by Admin on May 10, 2011

Today as you read this, I want you to know that unions (including DCSMEC ) are not only fighting to maintain working conditions and jobs for their members but are engaged in a fight for the very survival of the union movement itself.

The airwaves are saturated with corporate apologists, who sneeringly ask why should public sector employees even have benefits, which they call “entitlements”. Of which many nonunion working families are denied. This is an ingenious plan which pits worker against worker in a mad scramble for scraps.

As the powerful and wealthy with no one to keep their greed in check are gorging on record profits, they continue to foreclose on homes in record numbers, drive health care costs through the roof, and further drive this country into two classes rich and poor. They continue to slash our most essential and basic services, school funding, first responder budgets, elderly assistance and even funding for special needs children. As we pay for the fraud they committed as they wiped out $14 trillion in wealth, wages and retirement savings all we have left is our ability to say NO MORE. If we stand united and refuse to cooperate, then the despots are indeed in trouble. Our power is our ability to vote. We must use this to make a difference, otherwise our jobs and our future and the future of generations to come may be in jeopardy.

“Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms,” Frederick Douglass said in 1857. “The whole history of the progress of  human history shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. …If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. …”

If we don’t protect the contract and the men and women it serves then the struggle of those before us will have been in vain. If we don’t hang together in these hard economical times then we will definitely hang apart.

Keith Love

Business Agent

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Network Infrastructure Support Technician reminder

by Admin on May 6, 2011

Brothers and Sisters of Information Technology Services

This is a reminder that today is the deadline to have your application submitted for the Network Infrastructure Support Technician job. To all those who have not submitted an application yet please make every effort to do so. Failure to at least submit an application could result in the district challenging your application for unemployment compensation in the future. I would hate to see anyone suffer the loss of those valuable benefits in times like these. As of this morning only 232 techs have submitted applications, please get them in on time.

Keith Love

Business Agent

DCSMEC

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Network Infrastructure Support Technician interview update

by Admin on May 5, 2011

Brothers and Sisters of Information Technology Services…

Starting Monday May 9th, 2011 and for approximately thirteen days, the interview and selection process will begin for the new Network Infrastructure Support Technician position.  DCSMEC will have an impartial observer at the interviews to observe the process and to make sure the interviews are done in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.  The DCSMEC observer will have no say in the outcome of your interview process.  I would like to take this opportunity as well as all the officers of DCSMEC to wish all of you good luck in the days ahead as you move forward in the selection process.

Keith Love

Business Agent

DCSMEC

5/5/11

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Pb School district debates cuts of $33.5

by Admin on May 5, 2011

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

BOCA RATON — The school board and its advisory committee got their first look Wednesday at the complete proposed budget for the next school year, with about $33.5 million in cuts.

The advisory committee, followed by the school board, will spend the next month examining those cuts.

“It’s a system-wide problem,” board Chairman Frank Barbieri said of the district’s budget woes. “It will take a system-wide solution.”

Chief Financial Officer Mike Burke said that after the legislature completed its proposed budget late Tuesday, it appeared state money for education could be cut about 8 percent. The loss to the district will be about $92 million in state money, with millions more in federal stimulus money also no longer available .

Board member Chuck Shaw called the cuts to state education money the worst since the state funding system was created in 1973.

To try to make up those losses, the district plans to use federal grants and money from the sale of property associated with Palm Beach Public School, Burke said.

Much of the lost stimulus money is being offset by the 3 percent contribution the state is requiring employees to make to their retirement funds.

The district expects a $35.4 million budget shortfall, Burke said. The budget recommendations from Superintendent Bill Malone call for eliminating at least 766 positions. Most of the proposed layoffs are in support departments such as police officers, painters, psychologists, non-classroom teachers and custodians.

Malone proposed laying off 244 school monitors and 23 high school secretaries as well as cutting 10 positions at alternative schools such as the district’s program at the Department of Juvenile Justice’s detention center for juvenile offenders. Burke said the cuts amount to a reduction of less than 1 percent of the overall budgets at the schools.

“This is a pretty good effort to keep the schools as held harmless as possible,” Burke said.

The school board will hold a budget workshop on June 1, Burke said.

Barbieri said he’s looking at ways to spread the burden across the entire district, such as employee furloughs.

Malone has said that he hopes many of the laid-off employees can fill other vacant district jobs .

In other business, the school board listened to a report on projections for enrollment growth and school capacity issues through the 2015-16 school year. District officials estimated that enrollment would grow by about 5,600 students in that time – 2,400 in elementary school, 1,100 in middle school, 1,600 in high school and the rest in other programs.

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DCSMEC Notice – May 4,2011

by Admin on May 4, 2011

Dear DCSMEC members and colleagues:

We have to stop this madness! The level of anxiety, hostility and frustration are off the charts which does not improve the situation. Members ratting out their brothers, the insane rumors and misinformation have to stop, so let’s cut to the chase. Your union, DCSMEC did not create or conspire with Management to create the lay-off list (our input was to make it as fair as possible), we brought all the information we had back to the Executive/Negotiating teams to make decisions (we had them talk directly to the District Superintendent of Human Resources) and we have not lied to the membership about anything. The unacceptable and unfortunate truth is that we at DCSMEC are aware that much of the misinformation is being distributed and promoted by our Managers and Administrators. We have already contacted upper Management and requested they take action against those employees for their unprofessional behavior.

If you are a union member and need accurate information about what is going on, then talk to your Steward, Yard Representative or call the union (305) 477-6002. We have nothing to hide and nothing to gain by hurting our members. Ask yourself, why would you’re E-Board and Negotiating Team vote unanimously on this temporary pay reduction if they did not believe that this was the only way to save jobs? The budget crisis is real, the threats to our jobs are real and they were really going to lay off over 300 DCSMEC maintenance employees! If you have not already had the opportunity to read the letter I wrote to the membership on April 7, 2011 then I encourage you to please take the time now. It is posted on our web site at www.dcsmec.org

In closing, let me say that this has been the most difficult decision that our union has ever had to make. We had a small window of opportunity (two days) to figure out how to save our jobs in maintenance or we could have taken the cowards way out, and did nothing, blamed it all on management and watched our members hit the street. Those were our choices but we chose to fight for our members jobs (knowing that no matter what we did we were dammed). We wish there could have been more time and better choices but considering the situation, we still believe we did what was best for our members.

Yours in solidarity: Joe Cortese
This newsletter has been reviewed and distributed with the consent of Keith Love.
May 2011

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