Unity, tight focus keys to getting through tough challenges ahead

By KENNETH BRYNIEN
This message follows PEF’s 28th Annual Convention where your representatives spent several days planning, negotiating and molding the union’s goals for the coming year. It is no mistake the theme of this year’s delegate convention was “Moving Forward Together.”

The success of all our efforts will depend on our ability to remain focused on what have been PEF’s core goals for more than the last nine years — job security, better and stronger contracts, pension reform and civil service enforcement.

As a union, we will be challenged, especially over the next several months, as the Pataki administration ends and a new governor takes office.

In recent months, proposals have surfaced to move state employees and infrastructure across the state in what is seen as political and geographic patronage. The proposed moves of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets’ food-testing laboratory from Albany to Geneva and the consolidation of the state’s data centers from the Capital District to Utica will disrupt the lives of PEF members and their families, waste taxpayers’ dollars, and sacrifice economy and efficiency for nothing more than a political payoff.

PEF has and will continue to fight any proposal that forces our members to involuntarily transfer.
 We will work to ensure the next governor gets a chance to review the merits of the moves, rather than be locked into premature decisions that do not make fiscal or operational sense.

These relocations are just two of the challenges we are facing. The realities of the budgetary climate in New York will mean more challenges. PEF is prepared to meet the challenges and offer solutions. Already, we have begun preparing for the coming round of state budget challenges by working to identify waste and inefficiency at state worksites. This information will be the basis for cost-cutting recommendations we will offer the new governor to address budgetary shortfalls without adversely affecting our jobs or the vital services we provide.

Our election efforts in statewide and legislative campaigns have helped us gain allies in the Senate and Assembly, and will help our relationship with the new governor. As we work to achieve our core goals, your involvement will put muscle behind our legislative, and mobilization activities and ensure we continue building PEF’s strength