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Letters to the Editor The big Albany secret that the Civil Service Employees Association does not want the public or its members to know is that the number of state employees it represents has dropped by close to 20,000 in recent years. It's "secret" because CSEA's total membership is the same or higher since it now represents more school, county and municipal employees and with that fact the union has greater loyalties and commitments to them than it does its dwindling numbers of state employees. Servicing these non-state employees in their total membership uses up resources that once were used to fight for better state contracts and to fight the state eliminating state CSEA jobs and career ladder opportunities. If it's not true, just try to name any state agency where CSEA has actively fought to backfill vacant positions. The Albany CSEA secret is very important now because there are many other separate bargaining units representing state and State University of New York public employees. These separate unions are anxiously waiting the settlement of tentative agreements on new contracts. Reports are reliably circulating that the big stumbling block to settlements will not be any different than what is troubling labor and its employers nationally - public or private. That stumbling block is uncontrolled medical costs and prescription medicines - a stumbling block that is eating away at workers being able to make a living wage and provide economic security to themselves and their families. Faced with this full-time nightmare, all but one of the bargaining units are communicating and working together to try and promote health insurance and prescription benefit packages that don't further weaken take-home pay. That one exception is CSEA - the same union that has settled first in recent contract negotiation cycles and set very poor patterns for the other units to follow. Needless to say, this go-it-alone-and-damn-the-others-that-follow behavior is testing the tolerance of other union members, if not their own members. Why do the CSEA leaders sell out their members working in state government with low wage increases and cuts in health care and prescription benefits? Speculation attributes a lot of it to the "CSEA Albany Secret" and that its leadership is trying to curry favor with the Governor's Office or the Legislature to achieve other objectives benefitting municipal, county and school district employees. Another is that the CSEA membership is so passive it would vote for the Communist Manifesto if it had a 2-percent wage increase attached to it. Whatever the reason, the word should go forth that others are watching what CSEA's leaders do more now than ever before with this contract cycle. A lousy settlement full of givebacks and below-inflation wages will be fought on many fronts, from within CSEA and by many labor activists, if not their union leadership, in other state bargaining units. WAYNE BAYER Editor's note: The writer is a shop steward and member of the Public Employees Federation's executive board. | |||||
