Union dogs NY governor on the GOPcampaign trail with Bush
PEF members picket Pataki in key cities, demanding fair contract
By DENYCE DUNCAN LACY

Vowing to keep the pressure on until the Pataki Administration offers them a fair contract, hundreds of yellow-T-shirted PEF members confronted the New York governor at his public appearances in Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and New York City in October.

Pataki - who is being mentioned for national office - was attending GOP fundraisers in those cities with presidential hopeful George W. Bush.

"Before Gov. Pataki gets too involved in national politics, he should take care of business at home," PEF President Roger Benson told reporters at each picket. "And that means treating his own workers fairly."

Contract Justice riders

Benson and a busload of PEF members traveled by bus from Albany to Rochester and Syracuse, where they were joined by hundreds of other members to confront Pataki at the scheduled GOP fund-raisers.

In Buffalo some 300 union members, led By Region 1 Coordinator Bill Parolari, took part in the early morning demonstration outside Rich Products Company.

In Rochester hundreds of local PEF members and members of the Rochester labor council joined Region 3 Coordinator Linda DeVito and the PEF Contract Justice riders outside the Rochester Convention Center, bringing the total turn-out there to nearly 500. And by late afternoon when the GOP entourage traveled to the Hotel Syracuse, some 400 PEF picketers were there and still going strong.

"Fair is fair, we want our share," they chanted.
The next day, Bush and Pataki got more of the same when hundreds of determined PEF members were waiting outside the Sheraton Towers in Manhattan - the scene of yet another GOP fundraiser.

About a week earlier, many PEF Region 10 and 11 members took part in a March for Contract Justice across the Brooklyn Bridge.

And PEF Region 9 members at the state Division of Parole also held a contract protest in October outside their offices in Poughkeepsie.

Not good enough

The Pataki protests took place just days after the governor's negotiators - for the first time in 10 months - made the union a contract offer that included a raise. The proposed four-year pact, presented on October 1, would increase members' salaries 3 percent each year. But the offer included a number of unacceptable concessions, so the demonstrations for contract justice continued.

For example, the proposed raise is not retroactive to April 1 as union negotiators demanded, but would, instead, take effect in October. The state also seeks increases in employees' health-care costs, and reductions in their use of leave time for union business.

"The governor and his top aides did not have to wait six months for their raises and neither should we," Benson said.

"This offer does not go far enough to meet our members' needs, so we will keep up our fight until we get a fair contract."

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