2067 News

Union Meeting

The minutes from the two-shift Union Meeting held on July 19-20, 2010 are now posted. The door prize for this Union Meeting had reached $325. However, Mike Wilson was disqualified from the winnings after his name was drawn from the membership pool. (You must be present at one of the meetings to win.) (Union Meeting...)

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IAFF 11th District Caucus

July 23, 2010 - The IAFF District 11 Caucus was held on July 21 and 22 in Fort Worth, TX. At a previous week’s Board meeting the IAFF Executive Board approved several resolutions for submission to the delegates at convention. The total Per Capita attached to these resolutions is 68 ½ cents. The Caucus itself sifted through roughly 47 resolutions in preparation for the 50th Convention in August. Local 2067 representatives, Butch Crawford, Tim McDermott and Greg Skelly were in attendance.

2010 IAFF 11th District Caucus Report
(submitted by Tim McDermott) (Photo Album...)

Your Local 2067 representatives attending the 11th District Caucus, held in Fort Worth, TX this week, have returned. Butch Crawford, Tim McDermott and Greg Skelly joined roughly 200 other brothers from IAFF locals from Texas and Oklahoma to discuss the various resolutions to be heard and voted upon during the upcoming IAFF 50th Convention. This caucus holds the 11th District firm in its own resolve in preparation to cast our votes at the convention. The caucus equally was a great opportunity to touch base with our fellow brothers from the area while enjoying the fellowship, food and comradery one would typically find at these events.

The Fort Worth IAFF Local 440 Union Hall was found to be an ideal setting in which to stage the procedures over the two-day gathering. The new building acquired by these Texas Firefighters was indeed impressive. A massive meeting room, clean restrooms and lobby, well organized offices and conference rooms were seen by all as a place of envy. Local 440 members have something to be very proud in calling their own.

Upon arrival, the hosts placed before the crowd a generous helping of food during the first evening. BBQ, dessert and chilled beverages flowed from the well organized kitchen thanks in part to the assistance of what appeared to be the Ladies Auxiliary of Forth Worth.

After the conclusion of our registration, dinner and greetings we found entertainment in downtown Fort Worth thanks to the knowledge that Greg had a cousin, Jamie Richards, who was performing with his country band at the local, out-door night spot, “8.0”. We were joined by a following of IAFF visitors to the event where happiness grew as the night progressed; one obviously would expect this.

The next morning, beginning at 9:00 a.m., we were down to business as the Caucus drew several honored guests. The crowd was addressed by General President Harold A. Schaitberger, General Secretary-Treasurer Thomas H. Miller, and 11th District Vice President “Sandy” McGee, among others. Prior to the remarks by those IAFF Leaders were those by Fort Worth, TX Mayor Mike Moncrief.

The theme of the day seemed to stem from the difficulties having been caused by a withering economy effecting our members around the U.S. & Canada. Some are observably worse in point than others. Fort Worth itself in fact, according to Mayor Moncrief, is working to solve a 77 million dollar gap in its own budget. Local 440 however, is comforted in a close, working relationship with Mayor Moncrief. While agreements aren’t always easy between them, his door is always propped open for this group of firefighters. The Mayor was quoted as saying, “…since 9/11 your group has been branded with a new found respect. Neither of us wishes to violate that respect. I for one will not balance our gap with the safety of your members!” Fort Worth is privileged to have such leadership in which to work with and communicate. We should all be so fortunate.

General President Harold Schaitberger energized the crowd, as he often does, with his comments concerning our task as Union officials and members. He spoke on the National Collective Bargaining Bill now being considered in Washington. The importance of this to the fire service is immeasurable. Oklahoma enjoys collective bargaining now. However, others are presently left behind in that process.

The GP spoke in depth on the economy and the effects it had on many Locals around our Country. In a great many municipalities we have seen the result others experience causing a ripple effect throughout the IAFF. Often, this sets the stage for attacks on pensions, wages and other benefits earned and bargained upon previously to be a catalyst in which a chiseling is seen by hungry city leaders. We hear words from municipalities similar to “unsustainable”, “gold plated”, “I don’t get that” and “where’s mine”. As members of the IAFF, and the Norman Fire Department, we expect nothing less than to receive the resources needed to accomplish our jobs; doing so safely and effectively.

The IAFF is working hard, from the top at the International in Washington to each individual Local in communities around the nation, to battle a misleading and/or misguided believe that we must pay for the shortcomings of a downed economy with the safety, sweat and merits of our membership.

Mr. Schaitberger rolled a great deal of his comments into the battleground of today. Local Political Action Committees are the key to what now needs to be accomplished in surviving the war being raged on our Locals. Every aspect of our lives can be traced in varying measure to someone holding political office or some element affected by politics. “We are not a club! We are a trade union!” Therefore, Norman Professional Firefighters, along with Locals everywhere, must arm ourselves with the same battleground gear in which our foes are equipped. In addition to helping fire friendly candidates in our own community and state, Washington D.C. has become the ‘local’ political action area for all of us as well. The battle waging in a town three states away is also our shared theatre of war. Until we come to understand this, we will remain having one foot stuck in a yielding, local pep-club.

The IAFF has a big job ahead. The resolutions presented today, as they will be with perhaps some modifications at the 50th Convention, are another stepping stone to further the work of the International Association of Fire Fighters. Brought to mind today in our Political Action, Graphical Information Systems, Safer Grants, and other items bolstered by the ‘International’ are but a sampling of things to be improved upon with our help at the upcoming convention in San Diego, CA this August.

The Nation: The New Class War On Public Workers
by Amy Traub - National Public Radio

June 22, 2010 - Conservatives have declared a new class war, but it's not on bankers earning seven-figure bonuses. Instead, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels told Politico recently, the "new privileged class in America" is government employees, who "are better paid than the people who pay their salaries." We have to escape "public sector unions' stranglehold on state and local governments," agreed Mort Zuckerman, billionaire editor of U.S. News & World Report, "or it will crush us." Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot ominously predicts "a showdown looming across the country between taxpayers and public employee unions over pay and pensions," while the Heritage Foundation warns that "the more the government taxes, the more it can pay its unionized workers."

This decades-old assault on government employees has acquired new potency at a time of widespread economic suffering and populist rage. But the attacks have little basis in reality. A recent study by the Center for State and Local Government Excellence and the National Institute on Retirement Security finds that when such factors as education and work experience are accounted for, state and local employees earn 11 to 12 percent less than comparable private sector workers. Even when public employees' relatively decent pensions and health coverage are included, their total compensation still lags behind workers in private industry. A separate analysis by the Center for Housing Policy finds that despite recent declines in home prices, police officers and elementary school teachers still don't earn enough to buy a typical house in two out of five metro areas. Firefighters and librarians are unable to afford the median home in the New York, Los Angeles and Chicago metro areas. Nationwide, a school bus driver's wage isn't enough to pay rent on a standard two-bedroom apartment.

Despite American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funding, which preserved jobs and public services, city and state workers have been affected by the recession. The Economic Policy Institute reports that 180,000 local government employees have been laid off since August 2008, while furloughs have become a fact of life for public workers across the country. Much bigger cuts lie ahead: Education Secretary Arne Duncan warns that as stimulus funding dries up, as many as 300,000 teachers and other school personnel could lose their jobs this year to budget cuts.

The lavish lifestyle of public workers is a myth, but the right-wing mythmakers know it's a powerful talking point. By attacking public workers, they can demonize "big labor" and "big government" at the same time, while deflecting attention from the more logical target of Middle America's rage: the irresponsible Wall Street traders, whose risky, high-profit business practices brought down the economy, and the lax regulators who let them get away with it.

At its heart, the scapegoating of public employees is an insidious way to divide public and private sector workers who share many of the same interests. The Manhattan Institute's Nicole Gelinas, for example, cynically argues that cutting pensions for transit employees is an act of "pure social justice" because it might spare minimum-wage workers higher subway fares. Absent is any discussion of raising the minimum wage or of more progressive means of funding the transit system. Low-wage workers aren't Gelinas's real concern; they're just a rhetorical device in her assault on public employees.

The desired result is clear: there will be less pressure to address the decades-long erosion of pay and benefits for most working people in the private sector if public anger can be focused on the bus mechanic who still has health coverage. With a slim majority of all union workers employed in the public sector, the conservative class war amounts to dragging unionized public employees down to the level of contingent no-benefits workers before they can leverage their power to help private sector workers raise their own workplace standards.

Then there's the "big government" angle. To the right, the budget crises engulfing American cities and states stem from one cause: as Nick Gillespie of Reason repeats ad nauseam, "They spend too much!" — especially on the supposedly lavish compensation of public workers. This simplistic narrative ignores how the nation's deep recession has shrunk city and state tax revenue and omits the fact that plummeting stock markets have decimated government pension funds. To the extent that conservatives succeed in reducing fiscal woes to a case of runaway spending, politicians find it easier to address budget shortfalls with public sector furlough days, wage freezes, layoffs and benefit cuts than with progressive tax increases that, many economists conclude, would cause the least harm to the recovery.

This orchestrated assault may already be working: witness formerly pro-worker politicians like New York's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Andrew Cuomo's attempt to demonstrate toughness by proclaiming, "We are going to be tangling with public employee unions."

Yet it's a short step from lambasting public workers to rejecting the very idea of public goods and services — and of government itself. With the nation still reeling from the harm caused by under regulated markets, conservatives are using city and state budget crises to call for across-the-board privatization, entrusting unaccountable private companies with an ever greater share of the public good. At the same time, the myth of the overpaid public employee is being used to undermine a range of progressive priorities, from financial reform to job creation bills like the Local Jobs for America Act, which would boost the economy by preserving public services and public sector jobs. It's time for progressives to fight back and confront the falsehood.