Across New York state, Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) members are showing up wherever the Governor appears to protest and confront him about his threat to lay off 8,700 state employees. Union members are also holding rallies and demonstrations in front of the offices of legislative leaders who are backing the governor's plan. Tim Finnigan from SUNY Geneseo, left, Rochester State Employees Local President Doris Cota, Western Region Political Action Coordinator Courtney Brunelle and Judy DiPaola from the Judiciary Local picket April 8 outside Assemblyman Joe Morelle's Irondequoit office. CSEA told the assemblyman that there is a better way to balance the state budget; mass layoffs are not the answer.
Charlotte Wallace, a Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Cortland County Local member, uses the CanRX Alternative Prescription Plan offered by the Strategic Benefit Trust. Negotiating the trust's benefits into a contract can be a more cost-efficient way to provide health benefits for some public employees and could in some cases, be the only way to get benefits to the private sector.
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation is going green. The agency is implementing a Compressed Pay Period, or CPP, Pilot Program. The new program reflects concern for employees seeking a work/family balance and helps reduce energy use, traffic and air pollution. Eligible employees will be able to decrease the number of their workdays and increase the number of hours worked each day to earn a day off every tenth day. Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) member, Kathy Follet, along with a committee, helped the compressed pay period program expand at her agency.
Unidentifed Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) members and staff joined correction officers and other union members as well as concerned citizens at a recent rally to save Hudson Correctional Facility from closing. A state plan to close Hudson and three other upstate New York correctional facilities has met with strong opposition from workers, political leaders and community members.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)'s Central Region President Colleen Wheaton offers support to Groton, NY, Schools Unit President Sheldon Clark over his recent firing. Clark, an 18-year bus driver with a safe driving record, was unjustly fired by the board in January following a December, 2007, incident in which the bus received minor scratch damage to its cargo door. No one was injured and the students on the bus were unaware of the incident.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Treasurer Joe McMullen speaks out for affordable prescription drugs and taxpayer savings as part of a news conference in Albany, NY. The event brought together an unprecedented alliance that includes the American Association of Retired People (AARP), New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), the Business and Labor Coalition of New York (BALCONY), the Public Employees Federation (PEF), Consumers Union, New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and the Center for Medical Consumers. The alliance is calling on state officials to make prescription drugs more affordable and accessible to New Yorkers through marketing and purchasing reform. CSEA has long supported the idea of using the state's buying power to negotiate the best possible prices for prescription drugs.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) member, Mental Health Therapy Aide Kenneth Ricketts disarmed a gun-toting consumer at a Kingsboro Psychiatric Center residential home in Brooklyn, NY, an incident that has CSEA calling for more security.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) member State Office of General Services electrician Frank Salvagio installs an improved light fixture he designed into a marble wall at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, NY. Salvagio recently won the state Civil Service Department Merit Award for his suggestion to replace outdated magnetic light ballasts in the plaza's 420 security lights with more efficient electric ones. The new electronic ballasts will last five times longer and use less energy than the magnetic ones.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) members Robert Knight, a Rockland County employee and vice president of the Board of Trustees for the Ramapo-Catskill Library System; Jo Ann Reuben, an Ulster County Clerk's Office worker and an officer of Friends of the Rosendale Library; and Jennifer Ogrodowski, a department head and librarian at the Guilderland Public Library, at Library Lobby Day. CSEA members employed at libraries across the state came to the state Capitol in Albany, NY, for the New York Library Association's (NYLA) Library Lobby Day. Library workers urged state officials to increase state aid and close the gap in funding for libraries so they can better provide library resources to their communities.
Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)'s Buffalo Psychiatric Center Local President Tony Brown discusses workplace violence during a workshop held in Corning, NY, for CSEA members from across the Western Region. More than a year after the Worksite Security Act went into effect, CSEA members are still waiting for the state to complete a workplace violence prevention rule, which seeks to add clarity and direction to the law so that public employers can comply with the requirements.