PEF moves swiftly to aid members By SHERRY HALBROOK Check out the PEF website and you will see the union has posted more than 20 useful and fact-packed updates on the World Trade Center tragedy, subsequent anthrax attacks and activation of military reserves for members coping with these challenging events. But even this resource doesn’t begin to illustrate just how comprehensive PEF’s efforts are to help its members and their families through this crisis. “We’ve dealt with injured members and deaths before, when we could respond on a one-person basis,” PEF President Roger Benson said at the union’s annual convention last month. But the events of September 11 produced such massive devastation that PEF has been forced to develop a whole new triage approach. “We never foresaw that we would have to become insurance, social work, real estate and financial advisors,” Benson said. “We found ourselves in an area where there was no play book. We had to meet daily to set up the plays for that day. And we quickly realized that information was the key. So, we began putting out news memos and posting them on our website.” The union moved quickly, he said, to determine that its New York City staff were safe and to find and equip a new temporary location for the NYC field office. “We began communicating with our regional leaders and council leaders. And by the end of the week, we had a list of the 34 missing members.” “We immediately sent overnight letters to every family and started calling those families. The following Monday, we began delivering checks for $5,000 to the families to help them meet immediate expenses.” Benson said the union discovered just how desperately some families needed that cash when PEF Vice President Pat Baker and General Counsel William Seamon visited the widow of one of the slain PEF members. “She had recently immigrated to the US and spoke little English. She had four little children, no understanding of her family’s finances and a total of just 75 cents in the house,” Benson said. “The money we gave to her and the other families came from our international affiliates — the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union. It was approved in just two two-minute phone calls,” Benson said. The president designated four PEF staff members to “adopt” the families of the 34 members who died. “These staff were told to make this their top priority and to take all calls from the families immediately. Sometimes they call up to half-a-dozen times a day with questions. “We’ve also arranged for these families to receive free legal and financial planning assistance through the PEF Membership Benefits Program,” Benson said. And the union established the PEF WTC Relief Fund, which now totals more than $48,000 in contributions. Meanwhile, Benson met with local PEF leaders in New York City, helped get the union’s temporary field office up and running and wrote to the director of state operations to recommend steps that needed to be taken to meet the needs of affected state employees in the city. Benson said he personally met with the governor for about five minutes and found him “a different Gov. Pataki than ever before. He said he needed our help and wanted our recommendations and wanted us to put our past behind us. “I want you to know,” Benson told the delegates, “that the past will never be forgotten, but we have an opportunity to work with the state and local-government leaders as never before.” A PEF task force of local leaders and staff formed to deal with the crisis arranged for professional independent air-quality evaluations in state offices near the World Trade Center. “We identified 3,000 PEF survivors in that area and sent them a package of information they might need. Booklets of information also were sent to the 34 families of those who died,” Benson said. “I want to thank our leaders and staff, particularly those in PEF Membership Benefits,” he said, “who responded to this tragedy and are helping our members through the most difficult thing they could ever experience.” The Communicator Home Page