Local 375 - CSTG - DC37, AFSCME

15 of your elected officers and chairs are actively participating at the AFSCME Convention in Boston. Here's the latest news:
Nearly 5,000 members, activists, leaders and guests from across the nation are in Boston this week for the AFSCME 39th International Convention. We've created a special website for Convention news, videos, photos and more here.
Click here for Convention News
Click here for Convention Videos
Click here for Convention Photos
Click here for the Convention Feed
Pres. Gerald W. McEntee kicked off the Convention yesterday (June 28) with a keynote address in which he called on Congress to pass legislation to promote jobs and protect public services, while demanding that politicians be held accountable for their promises to working people.
During his speech, President McEntee asked all Convention delegates to contact the Senate to pass the jobs bill, which includes funding for state and local governments. We need you to make the call, too. This legislation is critical to our jobs. Call 866-255-4194 to hear a message from President McEntee before being connected to your senator.
The day also included a tribute to retired Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy which you can watch here. Below is an overview of the Convention for the week. And remember to check out the 2010 Convention website.
Click here for the Bill Lucy Video
AFSCME 39th International Convention Overview
Monday: Tony Caso, Temporary Chairperson, Council 93 Executive Director and International Vice President, starts things off (watch video). President McEntee's keynote was followed by a special tribute to retiring Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy (watch video).
Tuesday: Delegates will nominate the next International Secretary-Treasurer and will honor AFSCME?s longstanding ally, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. A "Generations" program will feature young leaders and the AFSCME Retirees.
Wednesday: Begins with special caucuses for busting myths about public services workers, followed later with a special program about jobs. UniteHere! Pres. John Wilhelm speaks followed by an organizing program. At adjournment, delegates go to Boston Common to join forces with Council 93 members who are fighting to save public services.
Thursday: Delegates will elect an International Secretary-Treasurer. There will be a special program on AFSCME?s role in the historic passage of health care legislation. Progressive radio talk show host Ed Schultz will emcee a program on political victories, and political strategist Donna Brazille will speak.
Friday: The installation of new officers concludes the Convention.

A Letter to Delegates and Alternate Delegates (posted on June 15, 2010)

Brothers and Sister Delegates,

Please read my letter to delegates and the Local 375 Budget, approved by your Executive Committee. This will be presented to you for your review and approval at our regularly scheduled Delegates' meeting on Wednesday, June 16, in Room 1, immediately after our big rally at City Hall.

I look forward to seeing you there.

In solidarity,

Behrouz Fathi
First VP and Acting President

A Letter from the Acting President (posted on June 15, 2010)

Dear Member:

This Union is obviously not about one person. It is a collective enterprise. Your leadership consists of seventeen elected officers and chairs, and more than thirty chapter presidents. Where one person may occasionally have the best ideas, this is not typical. The best decisions we make are the ones that are made together, in a deliberative way.

Every elected officer has the obligation to work hard to deliver services to you. This means three basic things: contract enforcement (protecting what we have), negotiations (wage and job enhancement), and social activism: making our society better along the lines of the Union’s principles of equal pay for equal work, equal treatment for all, and respect for every background and ethnicity.

Since the suspension of Claude Fort, your Executive Committee has taken necessary steps and actions to improve the functioning of Local 375, in order to better represent you and protect your job and benefits. Sixteen elected officers and chairs are presently working hard and diligently to represent you and advance your benefits. Here is a list of recent accomplishments and a general report on our progress:

• Our Local, with DC 37 involvement, has finally settled with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on long overdue raises for more than 2,000 members who work for New York City Transit. These four percent raises will be retroactive to March 2009. Presently, I am working on a commitment date for payment of the four percent wage increase and the retro checks to our members.
• We restructured our Grievance Committee to bring better and faster service to you on grievances, disciplinaries, and labor/management issues. We are implementing a logging system which will track every grievance electronically so that we can keep to the strict timeframes in our contract. We are hiring another professional grievance rep to bring more expertise to our representation and avoid backlogs.
• We are well on the way to completing a list of bargaining demands which we are posting on our website for review by all members. We have reached out to every Chapter to collect bargaining demands.
• We are actively involved in the Municipal Labor Committee, representing all of municipal labor, with a view to resisting the City’s pressure to reduce health benefits or require contributions going forward.
• We are fighting layoffs in various agencies including Dept. of Parks, Housing Preservation & Development, Housing Authority, Dept. of Health, Dept. of Info Technology & Telecommunications, Human Resources Administration, City Planning, Health & Hospitals Corp., and Dept. of Finance.
• We have saved positions in HPD by successfully arguing that they are revenue generating and/or by transferring to other divisions and/or agencies.
• In City Planning, we are negotiating saving jobs by demanding that provisional managers be laid off first, or that “paid interns” be replaced by our members, or that they be transferred to non tax levy agencies.
• We have adopted a policy of recognizing and respecting democratically elected chapter officers and structures within the chapters. In a break from the previous administration, we are now involving chapter presidents in labor/management meetings and day-to-day member issues which are brought to the Union. So far, NYCHA, DDC (two Chapters), DOH, and TA, have been involved in labor-management meetings and I have requested that the agency recognize these chapters as taking part in the preliminary stages of the members’ issues.

All of the above developments feature the word “we.” We encourage your involvement in the life of our Union, especially now, when municipal workers are under attack by the media. We have to work together in our common cause: not giving up what we have, while making things better for all of us.

The Democratic Process
Originally, unions were established to be independent of management and outside institutions, to represent working people that management often takes advantage of or disrespects. Unions have their own constitutions, rules, and regulations. They are designed to protect members’ rights and votes and to let us handle our own affairs so that management and outside forces cannot interfere. There have been several attempts by some misguided individuals who seem to believe that Unions should be policed by others, to take matters outside the union for resolution, without allowing our internal judicial processes to work. I am asking you to have confidence that the rules of Local 375, DC 37, and AFSCME will work and are fair.

The AFSCME International Constitution addresses this issue clearly, in Article XII, Section 10, when it says:

“No member or subordinate body shall institute any civil action, suit or other proceeding in any court or other tribunal outside of the Federation against the Federation, any subordinate body, or officer of the Federation or of any subordinate body on account of any controversy or dispute for which a remedy is provided in this Constitution or the constitution of any subordinate body without first exhausting all such remedies, including all available appeals; provided that the foregoing shall not apply where the action was instituted to prevent the loss of rights under an applicable statute of limitations and the member has diligently pursued available internal remedies…”.

AFSCME, with 1.6 million members, democratically developed its constitution in order to effectively represent members and to avoid chaos. The AFSCME’s Constitution has a specific “Bill of Rights for Union Members” to safeguard their rights and members’ votes, and provide checks and balances. In the case of Brother Claude Fort’s suspension, the Executive Committee upheld our Constitution to preserve the integrity of our union. International President Gerald McEntee upheld that decision, but the process is not over yet. Brother Fort has extensive rights under this process and those rights will be upheld. Any attempts to resolve the suspension of Brother Fort by outside institutions are an act of challenging the Union’s Constitution and by-laws.

We have to respect and allow our internal processes to move forward. We have the obligation to preserve the integrity and independence of the democratic structure of our Union so that we can move forward with our main missions, outlined above. Whether or not Brother Fort is reinstated, the key issue is not whether the Union needs him to continue, because it plainly does not. It needs all of our involvement and good faith.

In Solidarity,
Behrouz Fathi,
1st Vice President and Acting President

Our Union Constitution (posted on June 10, 2010)

Brothers and Sisters, here is a copy of our Union Constitution. Please download it and refer to it when we discuss matters of governance within our Union. You can read it here.

From the First Vice President (posted on April 25, 2010)

Dear Union Member,

Our contract with the City of New York expired on March 2 of this year, and the DC 37 Executive Board has been engaged in preparations for collective bargaining negotiations with the City of New York. Of course, we are not really working â€œwithout a contract.â€ All existing wages, benefits, and agreements remain fully in force until the new agreement is negotiated and then ratified by the entire membership.

In March, DC 37â€™s Delegates approved a new negotiating strategy. As you may know, our council-wide contract negotiations consist of two parts: economic demands (wages and other cost items) and working conditions/unit bargaining demands. The DC 37 Negotiations Committee is comprised of all Local Presidents, including our own. I am currently serving on this Committee. For the last twenty-five years, the Councilâ€™s economic demands were negotiated separately from our working conditions/unit demands. The Negotiations Committee has decided to change this, and to negotiate both parts in tandem. This policy change has been ratified by the DC 37 Delegates.

Here is a partial list of our council-wide economic demands:

1- There shall be a three (3) year agreement.
2- A fair, reasonable and liveable wage increase effective the first day of each year of the agreement.
3- The reduced hiring rate shall be eliminated.
4- The benefit modifications for new hires shall be restored.
5- A recurring annuity payment.
6- No layoff during the term of this agreement.
7- Increase the welfare fund contribution rate for actives and retirees.

At the same time, our Unit Bargaining demands are being developed. The Negotiating Committee has asked that all DC 37 Locals submit these working conditions/unit demands to DC 37.

I have appointed Chapter 4 DDC President Muhammad Sheth to form a Committee to reach out to all Local 375 chapters and to our membership at large, to inform everyone about the upcoming contract negotiations and collect their demands. We must be creative. We have the freedom to make suggestions which would, in our view, be cost-neutral. One example would be an alternate work schedule. Another could be the creation of sick leave banks whereby members can donate time to assist other members who suffer serious illnesses or family emergencies. All of the demands will be reviewed by this new committee and then submitted to DC 37 Research & Negotiations, to be added to the Councilâ€™s complete set of bargaining demands.

We have to be united and strong in these difficult economic times. There is still room for growth and innovation, if we use our resources appropriately and do not spend our energies in wasteful infighting. Please consider in what ways your workplace could be made better, and contact your Chapter President or myself with your suggestions and demands for our upcoming negotiation. Brother Sheth can be emailed at msheth@local375.org , and I can be emailed at bfathi@local375.org

Fraternally,

Behrouz Fathi