By DENYCE DUNCAN LACY
By a vote of 33,899 to 2,876 — more than 10-to-one — members of PEF’s PS&T unit in August approved a four-year contract with the state.

The new contract, retroactive to April 1999, gives members across-the-board salary increases of 3 percent in each of the first two years of the pact, and 3.5 percent for each of the next two years, beginning April 2001.

The contract also includes a $500 bonus for full-time employees, and dramatically enhanced pension benefits.

“For the first time in eight years, our members have a contract with real raises in each year of the pact, and we achieved major improvements in retirement benefits,” said PEF President Roger E. Benson.

“We did not get everything we wanted, but the gains we did make were substantial, and this vote — a 92 percent approval rating — shows the members recognized that.”

With ratification, the governor is expected to extend to PEF members the provisions of legislation enhancing the members’ pension benefits, by eliminating the 3 percent employee contributions for Tier III and IV members who have 10 or more years of membership in the state’s Retirement System.

The legislation will also give PEF members in Tiers I and II one month of retirement service credit for each year worked, to a maximum of 24 months service credit.

The new pact also includes enhanced dental benefits and other health-insurance changes. The co-pay for generic prescription drugs will drop from $8 to $5, while brand-name prescriptions costs will rise from $8 to $15. Office visit co-pays will increase from $8 to $10 to $12 per visit.

“We promised our members we would not send them a contract with ‘zero’ raises, or any major concessions, and we kept that promise,” Benson said. “But more important, it was the hard work of the membership that produced the contract.

“We took a strong stand, stuck to our guns and we delivered a strong contract package,” Benson added. “This vote shows how much we can achieve, by working together.”

Your check’s on the way
State schedules PS&T payments
Aug. 30 — Lump sum to Adm. staff
Sept. 7 — Lump sum to Inst. staff
Sept. 13 — ’99 & ’00 raises to Adm.
Sept. 21 — ’99 & ’00 raises to Inst.
After Oct. 9 — Longevity payments

PEF packs punches with member power
Union leaders vow: Member mobilizing here to stay

By SHERRY HALBROOK
If you suppose the end of PEF’s long and arduous PS&T contract struggles spells an end to its Member Mobilization program, think again.

“We have spent the last two years building our member mobilizing network. Our committee has traveled from region to region, recruiting thousands of mobilizers and training them,” says PEF Region 9 Coordinator Neila Cardus, who chairs the union’s Member Mobilizing Committee.

“All of that hard work is paying off with a better contract and legislative successes that had eluded us for years,” she adds. “To walk away from member mobilizing now, would be like quitting the job you spent four years in college to prepare for after drawing your first paycheck. This is only the beginning.”

Or, as PEF President Roger Benson puts it, “Member mobilizing is the way PEF is doing business from now on.”

And PEF has plenty of business to do.

“We are going to mobilize our members’ power behind political candidates who stand up for our issues,” Benson says. “And we’re mobilizing our members’ power to lobby for those issues.”

Mobilizing members to turn out quickly in support of labor-management issues is just as powerful at the local and agency level as it has been at the state level, Benson says.

“Whether we are turning out a thousand members in 24 hours to surround the offices of the governor’s director of employee relations, or sending 50 angry members into a disciplinary hearing at the state Health Department in support of steward Sheila Bradwell, or packing a crucial meeting of hospital officials at Roswell Park, we make a statement that management cannot ignore,” Benson adds.

“We have two options for dealing with management. One strategy is to ‘Go along, to get along.’ The other is to ‘Fight for what we want.’ We didn’t want to have to fight for our contract, but we knew the other strategy had been tried and only produced contracts that included years of zero raises,” Benson says.

“We learned the hard lesson that the power of your argument will never get you a good contract. It takes raw political power to do that. And our power comes from our members,” he says.

“No amount of lawsuits or grievances or anything else can equal the power we generate when our members are mobilized around a common goal. Mobilizing is not a flash-in-the-pan or a fad. This is where PEF is going to be from now on.

“So, send us your home e-mail address, keep checking our web site and the PEF bulletin board where you work and calling our Hotline.

“PEF is on the move and we’re just getting started.”

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