City of Dallas Employees Newsletter July 2003

North Texas Association of Public Employees

Steel Workers Local 9479

Printable PDF Format of entire July 2003 Newsletter

Medical Benefits to be slashed for City Employees – Pay cuts in the offing

I have been amused to see several references to this year’s City budget that state that there will be no civilian employee pay cuts this year. Well perhaps amused is not a good word to use, enraged? Disgusted? Or on second thought, perhaps all of them would describe how I am feeling.

How can any package that includes tripling of our deductible be promoted as ‘No Pay Cuts’? Changing from regular, if somewhat stingy medical coverage to catastrophic, $1000.00 per person deductible with an ever-diminishing pay check is A PAY CUT in my book.

Some of the guys out at the South Side waste Water treatment plant calculated that with the three year freeze on cost of living increases and merit over the last three years the salary of your average employee has gown DOWN by almost fifteen percent. That is a ton of Hellllloooooo, that is a pay cut. Even using very modest measures.

Some council members have said they want to give us a modest raise. The chances of that are slim, since as the Mayor has pointed out that they have already raised taxes twice this year. And many of them are not noted for voting for tax increase for any reason. Oh yeah, one council member suggested raising the retirees health insurance to $1000.00 deductible with a 50/50 co-pay!!

Wednesday, August 20^th at Noon - Benefit Cuts, Privatization, Layoffs, Changes to Salary Continuation.

Lots of people are being affected by the cuts and changes proposed in this years budget. How often do you say to yourself, I can’t wait until I retire, so I won’t have to put up with this aggravation anymore? Well guess what? It doesn’t end when you retire!

Our deductibles are going up, the City’s share is going down, and if you are injured on the job the time you can collect salary continuation pay is being slashed.

On August 20^th at Noon , the Steelworkers and the Dallas City Retired Employees Association invite all city employees to join them in the Flag room, Sixth floor City Hall. Refreshments will be served.

We will be discussing the changes to this year’s budget and how they affect current employees and our retirees and also how they will affect own retirement future.

Steelworkers are encouraged to meet at our Office prior to the Rally. We will have t-shirts and caps will be passed out to our members. For more information, you can stop by the association offices at 500 S. Ervay Suite 112A or Call 214-760-7422

Ask the Steelworkers – All questions answered

Dear Steelworkers, I currently work at the South Side Treatment Plant. I am not a member and I have several questions about the Steelworkers. Signed Non-Member.

They are looking into it. The international did not get the necessary information on the current bid package until it was way too late to do anything with it for this year. This is despite us requesting that information from the Mayor’s office months earlier. Currently, the international is working with Blue Cross/Blue Shield right now to iron out something that might work for us next time and withstand the inevitable legal challenges.

Ya'll (Steelworkers) are gonna have to speak up- If it wasn’t for gossip, I wouldn’t know anything about the Steelworkers.

We are open to suggestions on how best to communicate with all the city employees. However, we must point out that Skywriting is not an option for us at this time.

Our president has ‘spoken up’ at numerous council meetings. We conduct meetings monthly, have held open houses where people could come and ask us questions, and posted copies of the entire newsletter on our website for anyone who wanted to download it.

In addition to all that, we have sent out
newsletters to over 1500 non-members, and sent copies of the newsletter to
various departments to be passed around. Oh, and we also distribute informational flyer to the bulletin board system. What do you suggest we do in addition to that?

Ad-3-43..... Distributions of info to all city hall employees on bulletin boards in city facilities is subject to approval of Director of Human Resources....Are they going to allow Steelworkers info on boards?

Yes, and we distributed flyers for the 'Official Bulletin Boards'. Currently Human Resources refuses to approve any news letters…. Period. However nothing is said about things taped to the break room fridge. Which is where some departmental storekeepers often post theirs.

Talk to your storekeepers or clerks, they can be a central information point for you and the other people in your department.

Also, One enterprising member has suggested that local members bring in their newsletters from home when they have finished reading them and use some twine to hang copies of the newsletter in the bathroom stalls. Hummm, Strange idea, but it would entertain and educate all at the same time. ;-)

Anyone, who cannot download and print a copy of the newsletter for their work area, can call and request that one be sent to their job site by mail. http://www.cityofdallasemployees.com

These questions were actually submitted by a non-member. However all employees can ask questions by mailing or emailing them to us.

What can’t you do? So many people to complain to, so little time. Please keep in mind that the changes to our heath benefits affect not only us and our families, but also the retirees and amazingly enough perhaps-even Dart employees. Who knew? Oh, and let us not forgot the most important group affected, Dallas city and county residents. Yep. Them too.

You need to contact your friends, neighbors and any retirees you may know, and get them to join you in complaining about how the city is trying to shift this cost first to the city employees, dependants and retirees and then onto the county health care system.

Lets face it, lower salaried employees, uncovered spouses, dependant children and retirees on fixed incomes will no longer be able to afford routine health care. This means minor illnesses will not be discovered, prevented or stopped before they require more costly treatment. Many of these people are going to be forced to start relying on the County health care system as their primary care provider. Which is already over strained and in need of more tax dollars.

So that means that low cost prevention will be delayed due to high out of pocket costs ($1000.00 per year per person) until it becomes such a problem that they are forced to go to the emergency room at the county hospital for treatment. This could be a problem for the local ER’s and hospitals that already have to write off millions and millions of dollars in unpaid bills every year.

Explain to your family, friends, neighbors and even church groups about this cost shifting that affects not only your pocket book but theirs also.

Together we can all contact the City Council and perhaps even as important this time… our County Commissioners !

Let them all know that this is a return to the bad old days when kids became deaf from easily curable childhood diseases. Ask them if in this age of SAR and West Nile do they really want people in the advanced stages of an illness sitting in a waiting room infecting everyone there because they could not afford early detection and treatment?

Trust me the County Commissioners and Taxpayers do not want this cost shifted to them. Remind the City Council that early prevention and affordable heath care actually lowers costs in the long run by preventing minor illnesses from spiraling out of control! Which is why we went to preventive health care programs it in the first place!

During the ‘Speak With the Mayor’ meeting held on May 15^th, 2003 , Mayor Miller stated that one of the reason the Uniformed employees enjoy a better standing with the city is that they are so much better organized. For the last year the North Texas Association of Public Employees (NTAPE) an affiliate of the United Steelworkers has been reaching out to the civilian employees to attempt to correct this deficiency.

We have and will continue to work on becoming an organization that can guarantee that someday soon, Civilian Employees enjoy the same standing as the Uniformed personnel.

Sneaky new wrinkle on the Dallas Combined Charity/United Way Campaign

In a very quiet way, major changes are taking place in the way the city payroll deductions for the city charity drive are going to be conducted in the future.

As you may recall, last December the city did not have a charity drive, it merely CONTINUED TO DEDUCT from employees using the PREVIOUS years donation forms. When questioned, we were told that the current campaign was SUPPOSED to run eighteen months not twelve.

This of course was NOT true. The forms and booklets were delivered to the City Managers office during December, but were deliberately held. Some sources privately confided that the new payroll system was in such bad shape that they were afraid to make any change not absolutely necessary to the employee payrolls. Other’s suggested that city management was afraid to ask for donations at the same time that the city employees were so disgruntled over recent policies, including the scheduled discontinuation and PERMANENT reduction of the Service Incentive Pay.

Be advised that any pledge you make will AUTOMATICALLY REOCCUR on an annual basis until such time as YOU go to the bother and effort to amend, change or revoke it. This includes one-time donations.

Municipal Employee Associations must grow to affect change!

We must all strive to do more to pursue our efforts for better working conditions wages and benefits. One way, among many, is to increase membership. Numbers speak loud and long. I speak not just of increasing membership in Dallas , but also at the State and National levels. We need a voice for change.

Federal Law permits State, County and City Governments, to declare certain employees exempt. This means those exempt employees may receive "Comp Time" in-lieu-of overtime. This needs to be changed. Our Employee's, who work to support their families and pursue their life styles, should have the same rights and privileges as other employees, who work in the private sector.

Employee's, in the private sector, are covered by other laws, which are not applicable to our employees, Public Employees. As an important example, the private has sector has protection in the area of Safety, regulated by OSHA, a Federal Government agency. To whom do our Public Employees turn to for assistance? There is no agency outside the State, County or City that we can turn to. This is so unfair, it is a travesty.

We can only change these areas of unfairness by working together. Working together, not only in the City of Dallas , by increasing our membership, but we must continue to grow Statewide. Part of the dues paid go toward this effort. We are continuing to grow in our other Public Employee Local Unions in Smith County ( Tyler ), Corpus Christi and Laredo . Campaigns are underway in other locations throughout the State. In fact, we have just chartered a new Local Union of County Employees right here in Dallas .

Continue your participation and spread the word to your coworkers. If they are not members, encourage them to join. Let them know the problems we face and our efforts to make change. It can and will be done if all Public sector employees begin to work together. - Jerry Storm Steelworkers, District 12 Representative

One day while I was speaking against slavery, an old man in the audience heckled me:

"Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Why I don't care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea."

"Perhaps not," I replied, "But the Lord willing, I'll keep you scratching. Believe that if you are not happy with the way things are, then you have the responsibility to try to change things, even if all you can do is talk." - Story attributed to Sojourner Truth 1797-1883

Ms. Truth was an advocate for equality and justice, you can download a digital copy of her book “The Narrative of Sojourner Truth” at http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext99/sjrnr10.txt