WORK SAFETY INJUSTICE-
President Roger Benson holds
a press conference in Buffalo
on the Judith Scanlon murder.
Seated are the victim's immediate family.

We must work
to end work safety injustice

By ROGER E. BENSON
As many of you know, one of our members, Judi Scanlon, was murdered last November while performing her job. PEF extends its deepest sympathy to Judi's family, and will work vigorously to ensure that no other families of PEF members have to deal with the same tragedy. To do this we must understand the arena we work in. In the arena in which we operate political power counts most and in order to affect changes that benefit us we must prove ourselves as a political force.

Many think that because the elections are over and legislators and governor are in office that our work is done for now.

The reality is our work has only begun. We have, by building up our legislative office, begun the process of increasing our political power. We have increased our opportunities for success, but there is still a long way to go.

Our agenda for this year is a full one. We have contract negotiations, the Executive Budget which will likely continue pressure to downsize state government, and there undoubtedly will be many efforts to privatize state services such as the Special Needs Program (SNPs) in the Office of Mental Health, the design-build process in the Department of Transportation, and New York Cares in the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.

And of course, as a result of the murder of PEF member Judi Scanlon, PEF will again take up the issue of workplace safety, particularly in OMH where on average, one of our members is assaulted by a client once every 3 hours and 18 minutes.

However, there is only so much four staff members can do. In order to be truly successful and a major political force, we must bring the political pressure that only our 53,000 members can apply.

We must understand that even though we may feel that these issues do not have any bearing on our jobs, in order to succeed they must become our issues. No longer can there be OMH issues or DOT issues, or Tax issues or Education issues, just PEF issues.

And, as PEF members we owe it to each other to do what we can to educate our political leaders and pressure them on our issues.
As SEIU president Andy Stern said at our convention last October, "Politicians won't see the light until they feel the heat."

As successful as we were in getting candidates elected last fall, we need to keep the heat on them by reminding them who got them elected and why.

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