By Joy Resmovits

Ten high-profile civil rights leaders are pressuring Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) to intervene in the sorry state of school funding in Philadelphia.

The national and local leaders — including the NAACP’s Ben Jealous and the Leadership Conference’s Wade Henderson — are asking Corbett to “take immediate action to address the budget crisis in the School District of Philadelphia,” according to a letter the group sent to Corbett this week and provided to The Huffington Post. “The crisis has become an embarrassment to the entire nation,” they wrote, accusing the state of “knowingly jeopardizing” students’ futures.

The civil rights leaders warn that Philadelphia’s school system has become “a cautionary tale for the rest of the country, illustrating the harm that occurs when political posturing and irresponsible budget decisions trump the educational needs of students, families, and communities.”

The group is also asking the governor for a meeting.

Henderson, the Leadership Conference president, said in an interview that the letter is just the beginning of a campaign to pressure Corbett and like-minded governors into fully funding education.

“When students, mostly students of color, in the wealthiest nation in the world are being starved of qualified teachers and nurses and guidance counselors, even desks, it depends on and hardens a psychology of abandonment and consigns students to a netherworld of inequality,” Henderson said. “Pennsylvania has become a national model of dysfunction in education. If civil rights groups don’t act now, the brinksmanship of Governor Corbett is likely to become commonplace.”

Public schools in Philadelphia opened their doors last month with much diminished staffs and a $304 million deficit. The district had previously shuttered 24 schools and laid off 3,783 employees, and then recalled fewer than half of those employees. Corbett is withholding $45 million in federal grant money, pending the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers signing a new contract in which the union would make $104 million in concessions, including taking a massive pay cut.

The year has been even tougher on the city’s students. The school district is the eighth largest in America with 137,000 students, 82 percent of whom are low-income and 85 percent of whom are of color. They’re dealing with crowded classrooms, missing guidance counselors, fewer school nurses and a dearth of arts classes.

Sometimes the budget cuts are a matter of life and death. Last month, Laporshia Massey, a sixth-grader, died after an asthma attack. Her father told the Philadelphia City Paper that she had felt sick earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, but there was no nurse to help her. “If she had problems throughout the day, why … didn’t [the school] call me sooner?” Daniel Burch, the girl’s father, asked the paper.

The national groups are getting involved because they are concerned that the cuts to Philadelphia’s school funding could set a precedent for governors around the country. “The nation looks to you for your leadership to address immediately this moral, economic, and legal imperative,” they wrote.

In a statement to The Huffington Post, Corbett spokesman Timothy Eller took issue with the groups’ characterization of the funding situation. He said that rather than cutting education funds, Corbett “has increased state support of public schools by $1.17 billion.” Pennsylvania taxpayers, Eller asserted, will contribute “more than $1.3 billion” to Philadelphia schools for the current school year.

Rhonda Brownstein of the Education Law Center — Pennsylvania, who also signed the group letter, called Eller’s analysis “smoke and mirrors,” noting that the increases were legally mandated pension obligations.

The civil rights leaders are urging Corbett to release the $45 million in grant money without conditions. But Eller said that would be impossible. “Contrary to what is stated in the letter, state law requires the district to implement fiscal, education and operational reforms before the $45 million in state funding is released,” he said.

The national groups also want Corbett to negotiate with the legislature an appropriations bill that would allow Philadelphia to restore its laid-off librarians, teachers, counselors and more. In the longer term, they are calling for broad reform to the state’s school-funding formula.

“What is happening in Philadelphia is a tragedy for our children. We risk losing yet another generation of children to the consequences of an inadequate education,” the letter concludes. “By taking the steps outlined above, with your leadership, we can begin the process of restoring excellence to the Philadelphia public schools.”

But Eller said the governor sees the solution in a new union contract. The groups’ request for a meeting, he added, “is under review.”

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/11/tom-corbett-philadelphia-schools_n_4080350.html?utm_hp_ref=%40education123

by Clyde Weiss

– It’s a piece of reporting making big waves. In the current issue of Rolling Stone, writer Matt Taibbi lays bare the sordid system by which politicians looted public pensions to finance other priorities, then blamed the retirees for the underfunded pensions.

“Here’s what this game comes down to,” writes Taibbi in “Looting the Pension Funds.” “Politicians run for office, promising to deliver law and order, safe and clean streets, and good schools. Then they get elected, and instead of paying for the cops, garbagemen, teachers and firefighters they only just 10 minutes ago promised voters, they intercept taxpayer money allocated for those workers and blow it on other stuff.”

Taibbi says a loophole in the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), made this possible. The law, passed in 1974, “was designed to protect the retirement money of workers with pension plans,” he writes. But lawmakers left out public pension funds from the regulations. That left state and local government officials free to raid or underfund them at their pleasure.

Massachusetts was among the worst offenders, making only 27 percent of its required payments. New Jersey followed with 33 percent.

Another tactic “involved illegally borrowing cash from public retirement funds to finance other budget needs,” Taibbi writes.

These abuses were generally ignored as long as pension funds were in relatively good financial shape. Then the financial meltdown of 2008, caused by Wall Street excesses, created a fiscal crisis that left state budgets in shambles.

“Someone had to take the hit. But who?” Taibbi answers his own question: Public service workers and retirees.

The very Wall Street-backed politicians who raided and underfunded the pension systems in the first place are now “using scare tactics and lavishly funded PR campaigns to cast teachers, firefighters and cops – not bankers – as the budget-devouring boogeymen responsible for the mounting fiscal problems of America’s states and cities,” he writes.

Read more about the sham pension crisis here: http://www.afscme.org/news/publications/newsletters/works/winter-2012/the-sham-pension-crisis

Source: http://www.afscme.org/blog/lawmakers-loot-public-pension-funds-then-blame-retirees-for-underfunding

“Crown Holdings, which is headquartered here in Philadelphia, is one of the world’s largest metal-container companies. Despite doubling its profits in 2012, Crown forced the 120 members of USW Local 9176 in Toronto and Ontario out on strike a month ago, demanding a two-tier wage schedule, removal of the cost-of-living allowance, minimal wage increases after years of pay freezes, and no increase in the pension after nine years.

Strikers and their supporters are traveling from Canada to Philadelphia for a rally at Crown HQ in Northeast Philly. Please join our brothers and sisters on the picket line and show your support.”

WHAT – Rally For Fair Wages

Who – Members of USW Local 9176 and Welcome Supporters

Where – 1 Crown Way, Philadelphia Pa. (Woodhaven Road Exit off of Roosevelt Blvd. PA/63)

When – Wednesday, October 16 at Noon

Please Stop by and show support for hard working union members and protest against corporate greed!

For more information, contact Patrick Young at: pyoung@usw.org or 412-298-6361

Via The Coalition For Labor Union Women (CLUW)

In an article at Alternet, Brigid O’Farrell takes a look at the problem of sexism in the tech industry and suggests that women in tech could learn from the successes women have had in the labor movement:

Women who laugh off the behavior of the “boys,” the declining percent of women and their limited job categories and lower pay may be facing yet another long fight for equality. Women tech leaders like Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook advise women to “lean in.” Union women, on the other hand, suggest that women learn to “lean together.” Women and men of the tech industry might just learn something from the labor movement today.[…]

The labor federation [AFL-CIO] represents 57 unions and more than 12 million members, nearly half of whom are women. According to the Department of Labor, union women earn more than women who don’t have a union on the job, with median weekly earnings of $877, compared to $663 for nonunion women. They are more likely to have health insurance, pensions and sick leave. They also have a voice at work. The new AFL-CIO Women’s Initiative calls for “equality in pay and opportunity for all; the right of women to control their own bodies and be free from violence; and the right of every woman to meet her fullest potential and the opportunity to serve—and lead—her community. Nothing less.”

Union women are speaking out about the need for protections for women and challenging discrimination. Randy Weingarten, president of the 1.5 million-member AFT, supports the new inclusive measures being proposed by her union to expand labor’s voice and build labor’s strength for both public- and private-sector unions; not just for teachers, but for all workers.

Executive Director of the National Taxi Workers Alliance Bhairavi Desai, who [was recently elected] to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, speaks movingly of her organization’s struggles on behalf of immigrant workers and the need for taxi drivers to have basic protections at work. She gives one chilling example of a woman who was raped by her customers and left in the trunk of her taxi to die, only for her family to find that the taxi company cared most about her final month’s payment for the taxi. Domestic workers like Myrtle Witbooi, the South African chair of the International Domestic Workers Network, are giving powerful voices to workers who have been too often pushed aside and for whom strong unions can make a big difference.

To read the full article go to: http://www.alternet.org/labor/high-tech-industry-focused-babes-and-boobs-needs-killer-sexism-app

Source – http://www.cluw.org/?zone=%2Funionactive%2Fview_article.cfm&HomeID=364752

Today, Wednesday October 9th: There will be an Informational picket in Center City with AFGE members to Demand an End to the Shutdown of the Federal Government.

WHEN/WHERE: 12:00 Noon, Today at the Wanamaker Building, 100 E Penn Square (across the street from the southeast corner of City Hall).

The reckless shutdown of the Federal Government is about to enter its second week. Republicans in the House and Senate have forced hundreds of thousands of Federal employees out of work, and vital public services like toxic waste cleanup and NLRB union representation elections are on hold until the shutdown ends. Join furloughed Federal employees calling for Congress to “End The Shutdown”!

Please Show Your Support!