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FOR THE RECORD The meeting was a follow-up to a rally held on May 1, addressing the possible loss of HA jobs and larger cutbacks in services in public housing. Mr. Floyd said that the voter drive was intended to "let the elected officials and politicians know that the people in NYCHA will be voting in this election and all elections coming up. We intend to energize them; we've been saying that from the beginning." He pointed to a recent motion in the U.S. Senate demanding an extra $1 billion in Federal aid to public housing this year as an example of the kind of political action the local was trying to generate. A letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee signed by 28 U.S. Senators asks that the committee "provide an additional $500 million for the Public Housing Operating Fund and $500 million for the Public Housing Capital Fund." The letter, which was signed by New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, said the funding would "create an immediate economical stimulus in communities across the nation while preserving the physical integrity of our affordable housing infrastructure." Mr. Floyd said that he hoped the voter drive would focus more political attention on the HA, which he believes has been taken for granted. "There has to be a reason that public housing has gone ignored by the Bush Administration for eight years, and we feel that reason is because there's a perception that the people who live in public housing do not vote," he said. "So they have to participate in this process so that they're not ignored ... there's no reason why we should have a $195-million deficit in public housing in this city." Along with action from the Local 237 shop stewards, a key part of the drive is the inclusion of voter registration cards in upcoming HA publications, which is being sponsored by the Local 237. *** Again the public relations gurus and Web designers hired by Transport Workers Union Local 100 have shown they believe shorter is better, even if it means presenting excerpts of a reprinted article as if it is the full piece. Last week, Local 100's Web site featured a reprint of a dispatch from New York Times correspondent Jeremy Peters July 24 reporting that Governor Paterson had "signed a law making union dues mandatory in perpetuity for all public employees who are covered by unions even if they opt not to join." Mr. Paterson had made permanent the Agency Shop Law, which previously came up for renewal every two years, something many legislators preferred because it allowed them to earn public-employee unions' gratitude prior to each election. The story on Local 100's Web site seems to end on a quote from conservative Manhattan Institute pundit E. J. McMahon calling the bill a "significant present" to labor unions. That was not, despite what Local 100's non-commenting publicists would have their readers believe, the end of the article. The article actually continued with Mr. McMahon saying, "What it does is it removes one of the few remaining leverage points people still have over unions. And management, which is the taxpayer, has very, very little remaining leverage." The article then continued for eight more paragraphs. Understandably, a union might not want to expose its membership to such anti-labor rhetoric, especially when Mr. McMahon implies that organized labor is a brutish leviathan, imposing its will on powerless employers. But to pass off an incomplete article as a full one seems part of a new Local 100 tactic. It recently reposted on its Web site a letter from its P.R. rep Jesse Derris to this newspaper accusing us of having, at worst, an unusual letters policy in relation to city dailies with larger circulations and staffs, without reprinting our editor's response. Despite this glaring omission, Local 100 still found the chutzpah to accuse us of manufacturing our own facts. Such a tactic might seem innocuously bizarre if it wasn't based on the idea that the union's members are too dim to spot the omissions. |
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