TIME FOR A COLA –

By ROGER E. BENSON
Every three years, PEF has elections for all of its officers, trustees and Executive Board members. Only in rare cases does PEF return incumbents to office. The state relies on the instability of the PEF leadership to force the membership into bad contracts and reduced job security.

Last month, for only the second time in PEF’s history, the union’s petitioning process resulted in no opposition for the statewide officers and trustees, and began the process of stabilizing PEF leadership. For the first time in 12 years, it may be new management across the bargaining table, rather than a new PEF president.
Over the last three years, we have spent significant efforts convincing political and union leaders that they would be dealing with the same leadership three years later. Despite this, we were able to lead and build coalitions to meet our core goals of job security, retirement reform, and stronger contracts.

How did we accomplish these goals? Through political action and an active and involved membership. Your activism and willingness to mobilize has placed PEF in a position to succeed. We have raised awareness of pension issues for public employees and successfully pushed for enactment of tier reinstatement, tier equity, five-year vesting, and we now have a commitment from the governor, comptroller and legislative leaders to support a cost-of-living-adjustment or COLA for state retirees’ pensions.

We were able to stop many of the proposals in the Executive Budget that would have threatened our job security. And, most recently, we were able to get restoration of funding for shared staff at the state Office of Mental Health.
Our fight for a fair contract has been unprecedented in the history of PEF. As a result of your efforts and activism, we were able to raise the governor’s original contract offers to other unions, not just once, but three times, and it has included pension enhancements unheard of in state negotiations.

We have employed many strategies and tactics that have tested our self discipline. We are now in a contract news and mobilization moratorium which we imposed unilaterally to remove all the excuses that the state has said are preventing us from bringing negotiations to a successful conclusion.

This is a position of power brought about by our many rallies and our willingness to pursue the state in a public forum until we achieve our goal of a fair contract. The pressure is now on the state to act. Only with your help and support have we been able to position PEF to take advantage of the opportunities presented
to us.

However, much work remains. We must expand beyond just the legislative arena. We must learn to speak with one voice, to build coalitions and to turn all PEF members into activists. When we work together, we can build the power to improve the lives of all of our members. Thank you. It is an honor to serve as your president for three more years.