AFT EXCEEDS DONATION GOAL FOR AIDS CAMPAIGN

The AFT has collected more than $100,000 from members and local affiliates for the AFT-Africa AIDS Campaign, a teacher-to-teacher education program to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

“This has been a true grassroots effort,” says AFT president Sandra Feldman. “We have reached this goal through the generosity of thousands of AFT members who have made $10 donations as a symbol of their support and solidarity with their African brothers and sisters in need.”

AFT member donations provide resources for HIV/AIDS education, teacher materials and supplies. Grants from U.S. government agencies and the AFT are funding additional program expenses and administrative costs.

“The HIV/AIDS situation in Africa is dire,” says AFT executive vice president Nat LaCour, who has been spearheading the campaign. “We hope to build on this momentum and continue collecting donations and identifying new funding sources so we can reach the hundreds of thousands of African teachers who need information on HIV/AIDS.”

The AFT wants to raise several million dollars to support the campaign by 2007.

N.Y. LEGISLATURE OVERRIDES BUDGET VETO

A groundswell of activism by AFT members across New York paid off.

By unanimous vote in the Senate and a large margin in the Assembly, the Legislature overrode Gov. George Pataki’s veto of budget restorations, and returned $1.4 billion to education and approximately $1 billion to healthcare.

“New Yorkers are fortunate to have legislators with the courage and conviction to stick to their decision to save essential public services,” says Roger Benson, president of the New York State Public Employees Federation, an affiliate of AFT Public Employees. “Through their veto overrides, state lawmakers chose a budget that protects mental health, education and New York’s hospital system.”
 

AFT TAKES PART IN SENATE PRESS CONFERENCE

When the Bush administration proposed a program that would provide prescription drug benefits to seniors who enroll in private health plans, a number of advocacy groups, unions, including the AFT, and members of Congress cried foul. Opponents of the bait-and-switch plan charge that the proposal to lure seniors out of Medicare and into private health programs is nothing more than a veiled attempt to privatize Medicare.

In June, AFT Healthcare members joined Sens. John D. Rockefeller IV, Tom Harkin and Debbie A. Stabenow at a press conference to call on Congress and the administration to include a prescription drug benefit in Medicare.

The press conference spotlighted a report by the consumer group Public Citizen. The key finding of the report, said Sen. Stabenow, is that most Medicare doctors in the five states studied—Maine, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia—do not participate in the privately managed plans that are the centerpiece of the administration’s proposal. Any effort to privatize Medicare reduces choices, ends universal coverage and diminishes the effectiveness of one of the nation’s most successful programs, she said.

“I talk to hundreds of frontline nurses and healthcare workers each year and know firsthand the need for a prescription drug benefit in Medicare,” said Candice Owley, an AFT vice president. “[The] lack of a prescription drug benefit in Medicare is one of the most serious deficiencies in our healthcare system.”
 

SEPT. 11 ‘HEROES’ SLATED FOR LAYOFFS

Two New York City paraprofessionals who were widely celebrated for their heroism during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center have received layoff notices from the New York City Board of Education.

United Federation of Teachers members Julia Martinez and Margaret Espinoza helped save the lives of two wheelchair-bound students at the High School for Leadership and Public Service during the evacuation of the school just blocks from the World Trade Center.

Nearly 1,000 New York City paraprofessionals have been slated for layoff because of the school system’s budget shortfall. The UFT has filed a lawsuit against schools chancellor Joel Klein, which seeks an injunction to stop the layoffs.

At the same time Klein is firing the paras, who make about $23,000 a year, he has hired 10 regional superintendents, 108 instructional supervisors and six operations managers, each earning more than $135,000.
 

VOTERS IN PORTLAND, ORE., APPROVE NEW TAX

As Republican lawmakers in Congress were ironing out the $350 billion federal tax giveback measure, voters in Multnomah County, Ore., which encompasses Portland, approved a three-year 1.25 percent county income tax in May.

Proponents of the federal tax giveback and supporters of the county tax ushered their initiatives through with strikingly similar arguments. Congressional Republican leaders and President Bush insisted the tax cut was necessary to prop up the economy and create jobs.

Multnomah County voters reasoned that the new county tax was needed to save jobs and preserve public services, both of which are important to the community’s economy and quality of life.

The ballot initiative is expected to generate $128 million annually through June 2006. The money is earmarked for schools, public safety and social services.

Without voter approval of the tax, “we would have had layoffs,” says Louise Currin, treasurer of the Portland Federation of Teachers and Classified Employees/AFT.
 

FAMILY LEAVE WIN FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES

The U.S. Supreme Court handed public employees a victory when the court ruled in late May that states can be sued for violations of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.

The court’s 6-3 ruling in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs is an “important confirmation that state employees are eligible for the same family and medical leave rights that all workers are entitled to under the FMLA,” said the AFT in a statement.

The decision stems from a lawsuit state employee William Hibbs brought against the state after he was fired in 1997 for staying home to take care of his wife, who had sustained severe injuries in a car accident.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that Congress had significant evidence of a history of gender discrimination by states in administering leave benefits; therefore, upon enacting the family leave provision of the law, Congress acted within its constitutional authority under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

“By setting a minimum standard of family leave for all eligible employees, irrespective of gender, the FMLA attacks the formerly state-sanctioned stereotype that only women are responsible for family care giving, thereby reducing employers’ incentives to engage in discrimination by basing hiring and promotion decisions on stereotypes,” Rehnquist wrote.

The case was closely watched by public sector unions and civil rights groups that have been critical of a string of opinions by the court’s conservative majority, including Rehnquist, that have effectively barred lawsuits against states for violations of other federal discrimination and civil rights laws, including the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).