By The PA. AFL-CIO

– Governor Corbett held a news conference on Tuesday, June 17 threatening to hold up passage of a state budget unless legislators approve a badly flawed pension Bill that even the Bill’s co-sponsors admit won’t provide short-term budget relief.

It may also result in Governor Corbett breaking two of his campaign promises. The one he made to the voters – passage of on-time state budgets. The other – the Grover Norquist pledge he signed to never raise taxes, which he has already broken when he signed legislation that eliminated the cap on wholesale fuels.

President Bloomingdale and Secretary-Treasurer Snyder issued an immediate response to the Governor’s threats, saying that the Governor’s billion dollar budget crisis is of his own making and now he is pushing a pension scheme that independent actuaries say will do nothing to save money in the current budget. It will however, cut retirement benefits of younger teachers, nurses, librarians, and thousands of public service workers by up to 40 percent.

“If we want to solve our budget crisis, we have to look at the real culprit – the billions in outsized taxpayer giveaways to corporations. Governor Corbett gives away $3.9 billion a year in corporate welfare – more than enough to fully fund our pension system. We cannot balance Pennsylvania’s budget on the backs of workers who have never missed a payment into the pensions system,” President Bloomingdale said.

During the press conference, the governor indicated that he would consider reducing the “pension collars’” which would once again lower employers’ required payments to the pension system, adding to the Commonwealth’s pension debt.

Reducing what the state and school districts are required to pay into the pension systems is how we got into this mess in the first place,” Secretary-Treasurer Snyder added. “It allows employers to put their payments on a credit card and run up the bill. This was a bad idea 15 years ago, and it’s an even worse idea now,” he said.

• The proposal was introduced by State Rep. Tobash and supported by Governor Corbett. If enacted into law, it will not provide any relief in the state budget, and any savings to Pennsylvania’s pensions system would be decades away – if there is any significant savings at all under the plan’s provisions. These are the facts which Rep. Tobash admitted in a June 4 news conference.
• An analysis of the Tobash/Corbett plan by the Keystone Research Center found the measure would force new, mostly young employees to pay for the past mistakes of their employers. What it doesn’t do is save the Commonwealth substantial money, now or in the future. (New Pension Plan a Step Backwards, available online at www.keystoneresearch.org).
• Cheiron, a Virginia-based actuarial firm hired by the State’s Public Employee Retirement Commission, also concluded in its May 26 analysis of the Corbett/Tobash plan that any savings from the Corbett-Tobash plan would not be realized in the FY 2014-15 state budget, and payments due to the pension would still have to be made.
• Cheiron concluded: “For new employees, the loss of retirement security is greater than the value of the cost savings for the Commonwealth.”
• The CLEAR Coalition, composed of labor unions representing middle-class workers, has proposed a series of revenue-generating options and cost-cutting solutions to help Pennsylvania’s state government meet its responsibilities and serve its citizens. Read more about it at www.clearforpa.org.

You are encouraged to share these points when meeting with your legislators.

Source: http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=4195&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

Join us for a rally at City Hall on Thursday, June 19, to make sure Council knows as they break for summer recess that Philadelphians want them to Keep PGW Public!

Join community groups, environmental groups and labor allies in calling for City Council to keep Philadelphia Gas Works, our public gas utility, in public hands. We have successfully kept Council from taking action on Mayor Nutter’s proposal to privatize PGW, but most members of Council have not publicly stated opposition to the deal.

Join us to call on city council to make a stand:

NO to rate hikes
NO to LNG in Philadelphia
NO to job cuts

Date: Thursday, June 19, 2014
Time: 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
Where: NE Corner of City Hall (Outside)

Source: https://www.facebook.com/events/1492535127631537/

– The following letter in opposition to NB 1722 was sent to every PA Legislator in the Philadelphia Delegation:

On behalf of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, I write to you to once again express the Federation’s vehement opposition to House Bill 1722. When I heard that there has been some recent movement surrounding this bill in the House, I was left to wonder how such a bill could even be discussed when Philadelphia’s schools are under such a state of duress. Students go to school every day in under-resourced schools and classrooms across the city, and their teachers are committed to providing them with the very best. However, teachers are not capable of producing text books, computers, counselors, and so much more that’s missing. And yet, instead of focusing on the real issue at hand—Governor Corbett’s more than $1 Billion dollars in education funding cuts across the Commonwealth—members of the House think it prudent to discuss seniority.

Often times, we hear anecdotal accounts of a child losing his or her favorite teacher “because of seniority”. Let me be very clear: no one has ever lost a teacher because of seniority. Teachers are cut from schools due to budget shortfalls. And it just so happens that under Governor Corbett’s watch, we have had a massive, unprecedented shortfall—one that directly caused the layoffs of nearly 4,000 public school employees in Philadelphia last June. Again, let me reiterate: seniority is not the problem. Budget cuts are.

When laying off 4,000 staff members in a school district, I can understand that some politicians may look for ways to justify it, to make it seem less immoral. They’d like to say, “Well, we laid off the bad teachers!” When it comes down to it, however, there simply is no morality in laying off 4,000 people committed to serving Philadelphia’s youth. That is why my members and I have been advocating for funding day in and day out throughout this crisis.

With the new evaluation system being implemented (again- another unfunded mandate from the state), and the notion that this brand new system (being forced upon under-resourced schools) will be tied to layoffs is simply unconscionable. We have excellent teachers across the district, and all of them are saying the same thing—they simply cannot do the best for our children under the current budgetary constraints. Instead of addressing this, we will implement a new evaluation system to not only rate those teachers but then determine their layoff status?

The Federation is not looking to “protect bad teachers” via our position on seniority.

We look to support struggling educators, through various means—including our PFT/School District Collaboration, Peer Assistance and Review (PAR). Through the PAR program, we have been able to work to help struggling teachers improve their practice. If, at the end of a period of intensive interventions, that teacher has not made the appropriate gains, he or she will be terminated. This is the fair and moral way of ensuring that all students in Philadelphia have great teachers.

Using a budget crisis as an excuse for union busting and blaming seniority for the dire financial straits of Philadelphia’s school system is immoral. It is a dishonest characterization of my hardworking members, and it is an insulting affront on all Philadelphians to assume that they will believe that Governor Corbett’s massive budget shortfalls could be fixed by doing away with seniority.

I urge you, as a member of the Philadelphia delegation, to ensure that Philadelphia’s children are protected and that their schools are funded. Let’s not waste one more critical moment entertaining the idea that seniority is the root cause of our financial straits.

Seniority has never caused a layoff. Governor Corbett’s cuts, however, have caused thousands.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Kind Regards,

JERRY T. JORDAN
President

Source: https://www.facebook.com/notes/philadelphia-federation-of-teachers/letter-from-pft-president-jerry-jordan-to-the-philadelphia-delegation-in-harrisb/837898999573512

By Holly Otterbein

– More than 50,000 Pennsylvania residents have lost unemployment benefits since last summer because they failed to meet a new state requirement to register on a job-listings website.

Advocates for the unemployed attribute the problem to technical errors by the state, the nation’s digital divide, and a lack of awareness of the new rule.

Under the law, which the General Assembly approved in 2011 and the state began enforcing in August 2013, those who receive unemployment compensation must sign up for the state-run jobgateway.pa.gov within 30 days. State officials said the regulation would help more unemployed Pennsylvanians find work.

Between September 2013 and April, unemployment benefits were halted for about 51,200 applicants — or roughly one in 10 — who did not enroll in time, according to data obtained by WHYY.

Pennsylvania officials said they do not know how long the average person has stopped receiving benefits. Sharon Dietrich, an attorney at the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Community Legal Services, estimated it has been days and even weeks.

“That could be the difference between being able to pay the rent and not, facing a utilities cutoff or eviction notice or not, or even being able to adequately feed your family,” she said.

Dietrich said some people are not signing up for the site right away because they don’t have Internet access or are computer-illiterate.

“We live in a world in which there still is quite a digital divide,” she said. “I think a lot of people who implement public benefits programs don’t grasp [that].”

Difficulties and some progress

The state notifies all unemployment compensation recipients that they must sign up for the jobs site through several mailings, according to Sara Goulet, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Labor and Industry. If they apply for benefits over the phone, she said, they are also informed of the rule then.

Philadelphia resident Kea Hollimon, 28, said that when she applied for unemployment compensation on the phone last year, no one told her she needed to register on the jobs site. She only became aware of the requirement once she stopped receiving unemployment benefits, she said.

Hollimon does not have Internet access at home and tried to sign up on her mobile phone, but said it was difficult.

“It was just frustrating,” she said. “I felt like I’m trying to do this, but I’m still being stopped.”

Eventually, she signed up on the jobs site at a brick-and-mortar CareerLink, a state facility that provides free employment services.

Goulet, the Labor and Industry spokeswoman, said the state has since revamped its jobs site so it is more user-friendly. For instance, it is now easier for applicants to tell that they have finished enrolling, she said.

“We want to make it as simple as possible for people so they’re not going for any period of time without benefits,” said Goulet. “If they’re eligible for them, we want them to receive them. But we want to make it as easy for them to also get re-employed.”

Advocates for the unemployed said some Spanish-speaking applicants did not know about the new requirement because of a technical problem that has resulted in the state sending them materials in English.

Language, location remain issues

Goulet confirmed that Spanish-speaking residents who apply for unemployment benefits online do not receive documents in Spanish. If they apply on the phone, however, she said they get Spanish materials. She blamed the mix-up on an “IT issue,” and said the state is working to fix it.

If residents don’t have Internet access at home, Goulet said they can register on the jobs site at one of the state’s 67 CareerLink centers.

That works better in more populated areas, however. Almost 15 percent of the state’s counties do not have a CareerLink.

Source: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/component/flexicontent/item/69300-50000-lose-jobless-benefits-for-not-signing-up-on-pa-employment-site-?linktype=hp_impact

By Jared Shelly

– Commuters expressed a collective sigh of relief Monday morning, as SEPTA’s Regional Rail trains were running on schedule.

A weekend strike by 400 workers was short-lived after President Barack Obama forced the creation of a presidential emergency board to mediate the contract dispute between SEPTA and its engineers and electricians unions. Obama called for “a swift and smooth resolution” and his actions mean that the unions will not be able to strike until the PEB expires in another 240 days.

But does that just mean the unions will strike in February? The two sides have 30 days to submit a report to Obama’s board their plans for resolving the dispute. Then the mediation will continue.

SEPTA spokesperson Jerri Williams still used some strong rhetoric in a statement released Monday morning. After detailing how it has offered the unions increased pay ($3 per hour to IBEW and $2.60 per hour to BLET), Williams said union leadership “made it abundantly clear that they wanted to go on strike.” That was after SEPTA asked the union for a two-week extension.

But Terry Gallagher, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, touted the president’s intervention, saying it was “what we were waiting for.”

Does that mean both sides will negotiate in good faith? We’ll have to wait and see.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/morning_roundup/2014/06/septas-trains-rolling-againbut-labor-dispute-far.html