Stick to your knitting, PEF
To the Editor:
Two recent Communicator articles struck me.
The first was titled “Keeping PEF focused, strong.” OK, that’s not a bad idea.
Get in there and negotiate a good contract, protect members’ rights, seek tier equity, protect retirees, improve cost-of-living adjustments, preserve our health care, lobby for legislation and civil service actions that will be good for the workforce, and so on.
But in the article about the PEF convention, I find left-wing activists engaged in a protracted, highly divisive fight over condemning the U.S. conduct of the war against terrorism, which they forced through by the slimmest of margins.
Does that make PEF focused or strong?
More like weak. It’s destructive to unity and totally off the point of what PEF is about, not to mention utterly wrong and misguided.
PEF is more and more resembling the failed industrial unions that have been more and more rejected by their own members for pursuing utopian, elitist, progressive agendas, instead of tending to their knitting.
Watch out or you are looking at your own future irrelevancy.
JIM KELLER
Spring Valley
Just missed ’04 contract bene
To the Editor:
I am a long time state Office of Mental Health employee (35 years) who just last year received a promotion after 23 years in my previous item. I got this promotion in
May 2004.
I was so glad to see the new contract called for longevity portability until I found out it was only for those people promoted after some date in September 2004. So, I lost out on almost $3,000 because I got promoted a few months earlier.
I am now making less money than someone promoted after me, even though I have many more years of seniority and service. It is not fair. It should cover anyone promoted during the contract year starting April 1, 2003.
Has anyone from PEF looked at how many others this has affected? Is there any plan to do anything about it?
I am writing to get an idea of how many members are in the same boat.
The reason for longevity was to give senior state staff a few extra dollars for their years of service. This oversight contradicts that notion. Let’s hope it can be resolved.
CHRIS LYNCH
East Northport
Editor’s Note: The PEF Contract Team worked very hard to negotiate an earlier start date for longevity portability, but the state refused.
White males job- bias victims
To the Editor:
Once again, PEF is pandering to minorities as evidenced by the outrageously twisted story which sprawled across two pages of the September issue of The Communicator titled “Members to lawmakers: Racial bias thrives in state service.” From the horror stories in the article, you’d think we were back in the ’60s with fire hoses and attack dogs.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The state, like PEF, bends over backward to pander to minorities, as any white male who has been passed over for promotion can tell you.
The real reason why minorities are not equally represented in the state workforce has everything to do with structural problems within society outside the confines of state agencies — such as poor education and skills development — rather than evil, racist managers conspiring to keep minorities out of the state workforce.
Those problems need to be fixed in society, not within state agencies by promoting unqualified or underqualified minorities at the expense of qualified candidates who are not minorities.
When society can bring to the state hiring table a list of bona fide protected-class candidates who are qualified to do the jobs the state of New York requires to be done, and who don’t have to be handicapped like horses at the race track, then we will truly have a society where color has ceased to matter. Until then, don’t blame the state and don’t blame the real victims: white males.
JIM CLOSE
Mechanicville
The Communicator
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The
Communicator Dec 05-Jan06//
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