Sisters and Brothers,<\/p>\n
These are truly remarkable times that we are living in:\u00a0\u00a0an African American man from the South Side gets inaugurated as the 44th president of these United States; a North Side son of Serbian immigrants who climbed the political ladder gets impeached after being arrested by the Government for trying to sell a Senate seat that he fills with a former attorney general; a young hispanic woman who grew up in\u00a0the shadows of the 26th St. courthouse becomes the State’s Attorney of Cook County;\u00a0a global economy\u00a0sinks into a\u00a0recession not seen since the Great Depression; hundreds of thousands of people\u00a0lose their jobs due to the economy; and just as many have lose their homes to foreclosure.\u00a0 So with all this going on, what are we supposed to do?<\/p>\n
As our nation’s leader so eloquently said during his inaugural speech:<\/p>\n
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we\u00a0have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task<\/em>.<\/p>\n And as president of this local, I can tell you that\u00a0it is our duty and responsibility\u00a0to take responsibility.\u00a0 It’s our turn to take a turn.\u00a0 It’s time to ask ourselves not, “What are they doing?”\u00a0 but\u00a0\u00a0“What are we doing?”\u00a0 In the months ahead, our local is going to face difficult budget related economic issues that are plaguing many other governmental units throughout the nation.\u00a0 In addition, the President of the County Board gets to reappoint the Public Defender this April to another six year term – or appoint another individual whom we do not know.\u00a0\u00a0 Rumor, innuendo and speculation plague our worksites with respect to this issue.<\/p>\n In order to allay some of these rumors, the Executive Board met on January 26, 2009 with Edwin Burnette <\/strong>and were assured by him that he is very intrested in being reappointed as the Public Defender of Cook County and he hopes that is what the President of the County Board chooses to do.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Mr. Burnette also maintains that he will not withdraw his lawsuit against them\u00a0 which is currently on an expedited briefing schedule before the First District Appellate Court.\u00a0 At issue, as you will recall, is the interpretation of the Public Defender statute and whether final authority over the budget appropriated and passed by the County Board rests with the Public Defender or rather with the President of the County Board.\u00a0 A decision is anticipated this spring.\u00a0 As always, the Board is closely watching both issues: leadership of the office and the interpretation of the statute.<\/p>\n In contract negotiations this week, the county trotted out Mercer Consulting and\u00a0had them hit the enter button 40 times\u00a0paging through \u00a0their\u00a0 PowerPoint presentation to the AFSCME bargaining committee on the county’s health care plans. \u00a0Basically, they showed us how we have pretty good healthcare benefits and pay less than many others.\u00a0 They didn’t need to tell us that we have good insurance.\u00a0\u00a0 But that all led to them giving us a proposal which essentially amounts to a cut in pay. You see, they just came in and asked us to pay more for our insurance\u00a0without \u00a0even bothering to present us with a wage proposal.\u00a0 You will remember that the county budget bill must be passed by the end of February and to be sure, there is still plenty of disagreement about how much money the county has and how much it still needs to borrow.\u00a0\u00a0What is actually in the\u00a0budget, of course, is anybody’s guess since it’s full of errors.\u00a0 So what can we do about this?\u00a0 We know that to get the county to move on anything, we have to get out there and take part in job actions.\u00a0 That is\u00a0the tried and true way that we get heard during contract bargaining. \u00a0Our responsibility and duty is to participate in the job actions because as we demonstrated on election day, “we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”<\/p>\n So two things are coming up that we need to take part in since it is our responsibility and duty as good union members.\u00a0 First, the Chicago Federation of Labor , AFSCME and AFL-CIO of Illinois are sponsoring a Rally on February 17<\/strong>, Tuesday at 5:30 pm at Plumbers’ Hall.\u00a0 The rally is in support of EFCA – the Employee Free Choice Act<\/strong>.\u00a0 Because while we have card check on the State level in Illinois in the public sector, no such mechanism exists in private sector.\u00a0 Passing the EFCA ensures the rebuilding of the middle-class.\u00a0 Without EFCA, people are being fired merely for trying to organize workers at their worksites.\u00a0 All I can tell you that it is well documented that the standard of living and pay for assistant public defenders in Cook County has steadily increased since the union came in over 20 years ago.\u00a0 Our responsibility and duty to other Americans is to show up for this rally and help others get the right to bargain as we have – for a better life.<\/p>\n The second thing we need to do is participate in Solidarity day<\/strong>, Wednesday, February 18<\/strong>, 2009.\u00a0 The union will have a button for all of its members to wear to show the County that we are standing together to get a fair contract.\u00a0 More information will be forthcoming but please get 2\/18\/09<\/strong> on your calender for Solidarity day<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I want to mention that although she was not present at our annual holiday party, Arlene Floren<\/strong>, from the Civil Division was named AFSCME LOCAL 3315’s Steward of the Year<\/strong>.\u00a0 And the shy and humble Kim Mines<\/strong> (26th) didn’t want to interrupt the party to be recognized for her efforts as Chair of the Annual Holiday Party.\u00a0 In many ways, the party is like putting on a wedding for 350 guests.\u00a0 It’s a big production and requires a lot of time, organization and patience- all qualities that Kim has in abundance.\u00a0 Thanks again to Kim for an excellent job and congratulations again to Arlene.<\/p>\n Lastly,\u00a0 I want to thank Emily Eisner<\/strong>, who recently retired from our office, for reviewing and discussing the Vermont v. Brillon<\/span> case with the Executive Board.\u00a0\u00a0 The Board\u00a0considered\u00a0very seriously\u00a0whether\u00a0we, as a union local, should file an amicus<\/em> brief before the Supreme court.\u00a0 In the end, we decided not to.<\/p>\n In Solidarity,<\/p>\n K.S. Galhotra Sisters and Brothers, These are truly remarkable times that we are living in:\u00a0\u00a0an African American man from the South Side gets inaugurated as the 44th president of these United States; a North Side son of Serbian immigrants who climbed the political ladder gets impeached after being arrested by the Government for trying to sell a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/local3315.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLocal 3315 President.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"