WELL DONE — PEF President Roger Benson congratulates Senator-Elect Hillary Clinton. — Photo by John Epting
2000 banner year for PEF members
Success happens by choice
By ROGER E. BENSON
Over the past year, with your help PEF has had an unheard of level of success with our legislative agenda and our election endorsements.
We achieved long sought after changes to the retirement system, including: cost-of-living adjustments, credit for prior service, the elimination of the 3 percent pension contribution after 10 years, improved tier equity, an affordable veteran’s buy-back, and non-pension improvements such as the safe needles bill. The “Parole Heart” bill and whistleblower protection were also passed, but have not been sent yet to the governor.
PEF identified 19 priority political campaigns, based upon the recommendations of the majority leadership in the state Assembly and Senate, as well as the US Senate campaign of Hillary Clinton. All of PEF’s endorsements are made based upon regional grassroots recommendations and are approved by the Executive Board. And, once again, with your help our efforts were successful — getting all of our priority candidates elected.
These are your accomplishments, achieved by your involvement and your support of your issues.
We mobilized and applied PEF’s resources effectively. Thousands called, wrote, and e-mailed the governor and legislators to support our initiatives, hundreds gathered for rallies, and scores of our members worked in campaigns to elect legislators who support our issues.
Our successes didn’t happen by chance. They happened by choice.
In politics, power begets power, and we have been able to continue building our political strength by building on your involvement and mobilizing around your issues. We remained focused on our issues and did not dissipate our energy on divisive internal bickering.
As successful as we have been in achieving our goals, we cannot rest. We must continue to fight for job security, stronger contracts and retirement reform, and fight against short staffing and attacks on the contractual rights we negotiated this past spring.
While this past year had its share of legislative and political successes, next year will have its challenges. There will be threats to our members at the state Offices of Mental Health and Mental Retardation, the Department of Correctional Services, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Environmental Conservation.
There will be continued moves toward consolidating agencies under the guise of improving efficiency. There has already been a new “interpretation” of our contractual protections against timekeeping by management in an attempt to achieve what they could not get in contract negotiations.
We must continue to build on the gains we made over the past year. The pension COLA was our foot in the door, now we will look to improve it.
The elimination of pension contributions for employees with 10 or more years in the retirement system must include a refund for those tier 3 and 4 members who have contributed for more than 10 years. And we must work for true tier equity by pressing for the elimination of any employee contribution to the retirement system.
To achieve our goals, we must remain committed and focused. We must mobilize. And we must remain persistent in our efforts and be patient, knowing that while we may not succeed immediately, ultimately we will prevail.