AFSCME Local 34 5/23/2013

Monday, May 27th is Memorial Day. Memorial Day is a day when we remember the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. There are a number of ceremonies being held across the state.

Working men and women have strength in numbers and the goal of our legislative and political efforts is organizing that strength to win the good pay, retirement security, safe work environments, broad access to quality education for our children and much more. By mobilizing through the union movement’s state-level and nationwide get-out-the-vote effort, union members elect candidates who support and will enact a working families’ agenda.

Child Care Providers Together

Working Families Win

Tax Fairness

Announcements

Possible unionization vote among child-care providers! After a debate that took nearly 10 hours over three legislative days, the Minnesota House of Representatives approved historic legislation that extends collective-bargaining rights to family child-care providers and personal care attendants. The bill passed 68-66 after surviving 20 Republican amendments trying to undermine it. With the victory – which was eight years in the making – about 11,000 family child-care providers gain the ability to vote on forming a union to act with a unified voice to improve the future for providers, children, and working parents. The law covers licensed and unlicensed providers who care for children in the state’s basic sliding fee program. A handful of Democrats voted no along with all the House Republicans, who waged an intense floor fight against the daycare unionization drive. The issue drew demonstrators to the Capitol from both sides of the issue.The bill became the sticking point of the 2013 session, taking 17 hours of debate in the Senate and three separate long debates in the House. Republican opponents had 119 amendments lined up to undermine the collective-bargaining bill. The most bizarre - proposals attempting to buy off supporters by allocating $2 million in state money to the DFL, or to AFSCME and SEIU, if the unions gave up their organizing drives. The Senate had already passed the bill and Democratic Governor Mark Dayton has now signed it into law. The bill sets up possible unionization votes among child-care providers who get state subsidies, and separately among care attendants to the elderly and disabled. Congratulations to Local 3400, CCPT (Child Care Providers Together) on this positive result after all of your hard work over the past eight years!!! ~ AFSCME

One of the most productive legislative sessions for working Minnesotans! The 2013 Minnesota Legislature adjourned at midnight on Monday, bringing to a close one of the most productive legislative sessions for working Minnesotans in a generation, the Minnesota AFL-CIO said.

“After a decade of devastating cuts, budget gimmicks, and giveaways to corporate special interests, Governor Dayton and the DFL majority in the Legislature passed a budget that restores cuts, invests in jobs and education, and makes taxes fairer for middle class Minnesotans,” said Minnesota AFL-CIO President Shar Knutson. “Minnesota won’t turn around overnight, but the 2013 session was an enormous step forward.”

The DFL Legislature passed bills that will help countless numbers of working people in Minnesota, including:

• A 26 week extension of unemployment benefits for any worker whose employer locks them out

• Agreement between labor and business on worker’s compensation reform that increases benefits to injured workers and finally recognizes psychological trauma as a workplace injury

• The right for childcare providers and personal care attendants to vote on whether they want to form a union

• Investments in job creation tools, an infrastructure bonding bill, and key construction projects like the Mall of America expansion

• Closing corporate tax loopholes, reducing property taxes, and ensuring the richest pay their fair share in taxes

• A monumental investment in E-12 education, including the guarantee of all-day kindergarten in every public elementary school

• Significant funding increases for MnSCU and the U of M, which will enable a tuition freeze for students, significant increases in the state grant and aid program, and passage of the Dream Act

• Ensuring highly trained professionals run passenger rail service

• Guaranteeing the freedom to marry to all loving and committed couples

While this was a productive session, one major disappointment was the Minnesota Senate’s failure to work with Governor Dayton and the House on a meaningful minimum wage increase.

“Hundreds of thousands of low-wage working Minnesotans and their families who deserve a pay raise are extremely disappointed in the Senate’s failure to agree to a meaningful minimum wage increase,” Knutson said. “Between now and the 2014 session, our coalition will be having conversations with lawmakers and their constituents about why a significant minimum wage increase is good for workers, small businesses, and our entire state." ~ Workday Minnesota

Making taxes fair! While our landmark collective-bargaining bill grabbed most of the attention, the Legislature also passed another long-time AFSCME goal - making taxes fair. The omnibus tax bill makes sure corporations and the state’s richest households do more to pay their fair share, while it provides tax relief to the middle-class. The bill adds a fourth income tax rate for the top 2 percent – those with average taxable incomes of $617,000 a year. The bill also closes a major corporate tax loophole, adds a sales tax for some business-to-business transactions, levels the playing field for local merchants by taxing internet sales, provides direct property tax relief to homeowners and renters and provides additional property tax relief through higher local government aid (LGA) and other state payments to communities and school districts. ~ AFSCME

New Trustee: Douglas Graham was elected to fill the one year Trustee position vacated by Katie Farber when she retired. Please join us in thanking Doug for stepping forward to fill this important position for our local.

Union Leadership Program: Reminder that the deadline for applications to the Minnesota Union Leadership Program is May 31st. Local 34 will cover the costs for this program for two of our members if they are accepted into the program. This is one of the agenda items for our June 19, 2013 Executive Board meeting.

Contract Vote: there will be a vote on one issue only at the June 5, 2013 General Assembly - Clinical Nurse Specialists wage adjustment. Since this is a change to our contract, we will hold a special vote at the June 5th General Assembly to approve that change.

Master Negotiations Committee: We have been meeting for the past few months and have agreed to a number of proposals for the contract. We have agreed that each Local will bring their final supplemental proposal items to the next meeting on June 6th. That means that we will spend the first 1/2 hour of our General Assembly on June 5th to finalize our Local 34 supplemental issues. Please bring your suggestions to the meeting. The Master Negotiations Committee will wrap up their work at the June 6th and June 24th meetings. After that, the final contract proposal will be polished and readied for presentation to the Employer at our first Negotiations meeting on August 12th.

Health Insurance: Our self insured reserves continue to grow at a steady rate. I think that we can safely say that you - the employees - are helping to hold down the costs by watching the costs of the services you and your families use.

Retirement and Dental Insurance: There has been a change in the process for dental insurance through the union. At such time as you are officially retired from Hennepin County, you will be contacted by mail with the information about enrolling in the dental program as a retiree.

Health Care Savings Account for Severance Pay: Stephen Cook and Jacquelin Poole are the chairs of the ad hoc committee working on the education of the membership about what such a plan would entail. Please contact them if you are interested in serving on that committee.

Thank you’s were given to Katie Farber, Cathy Cowden and Joe Weston for their years of service given to the Local.

Are You New to the County? Just Transferred into Local 34? To sign up as a union member, or to get answers to questions about AFSCME and membership benefits, please contact Heather Hemmer, Local 34 Membership Secretary.

Twinkies - Union No More: The new owners of Twinkies snack cakes announced last week they will re-open four shuttered production plants in the coming months, but have no intention of doing business with the labor unions that have represented the workers at those bakeries for generations.

Coverage Changes Pending for Some County Employees: The Hennepin County Board will direct staff to align its policies, procedures, and employee benefit coverage with state law, pending the August 1st implementation of the Freedom to Marry bill. Special thanks to Commissioners Peter Mclaughlin, Jan Callison, Gail Dorfman, and Linda Higgins for their support of this action.

Money and power has concentrated at record levels while most Americans are struggling to pay the electric bill. Why do the rest of us stand for it?

“We’re conscious of the injustice, but not fully conscious of it, because frankly, we have enough to worry about in our own lives. As such, we’ve come to accept these injustices as simple facts of life – prepackaged side effects of the human condition, as natural and intertwined with our existence as water to a stream, beyond our capacity to affect in any significant way.” ~ Mike David