Minnesota's billionaire "liberal" "pro-labor" governor, Mark Dayton, has ordered working hours for thousands of state employees reduced by up to 20% while bringing in lower-paid new hires to do the jobs of the members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees with no objections from the District Director, Eliot Seide, or his side-kick, Eric Lehto. Why no opposition from Shar Knutson, President of the Minnesota AFL-CIO or her side-kick Mark Froemke.
What is going on here? State employees are losing 20% of their pay--- their standard of living slashed--- and these union "leaders" sit in silence doing nothing?
No wonder this leaflet is being distributed by a rank-and-file organization made up of AFSCME members who are pissed off:
We don't want Eliot Seide and his toothless, management-loving paper union
Our Dues - Our Union.
OUR AFSCME
Our rights.
Our Livelihoods.
Building a rank and file caucus for a democratic, fighting, militant, united union.
Brothers and Sisters,
With every new contract we have had our rights and our livelihoods decimated. Only a paper union with leaders taking our dues while doing nothing to represent us would have allowed this to happen.
This isn't Eliot Seide's union. This is our union. Let Eliot Seide go into the business world to build his fortune instead of building his fortune on our backs, off our unresolved grievances and problems.
Eliot Seide negotiated a concession contract with a Democratic governor.
The wage increases are far off-set with the rising prices we pay for groceries, home mortgages and rents, home and car insurance, gas, electricity, home heating fuels, child care and college tuition for our children. Our co-pays for healthcare have increased. This is going backwards, not forwards.
Our pensions are at risk.
We get no support or help from union leaders as unfair and unpaid disciplinary suspensions mount. Grievances have become a hassle. Arbitration has become too costly. What do our dues pay for?
One by one we are being picked off and fired as we gain seniority with increased pay levels.
Our union has shamefully endorsed a Minimum Wage for other workers based on what the Chamber of Commerce wants instead of the living wage morality, human decency, justice and solidarity requires.
We have a union leadership covering its betrayals with glowing hypocritical statements of admiration to real leaders like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela as a cover for refusing to stand and fight the injustices of the present.
We ask you to build a caucus of OUR AFSCME in your AFSCME local and in your workplace. Together we can get our AFSCME back on course. This is OUR union. OUR dues.
We need an active and involved membership. We need to understand self-serving power in our union and the power of management concede nothing without struggle. Our union was built in struggle. Our union will survive in struggle fighting for our rights, for safe workplaces and for our livelihoods.
Forward together. Together In Struggle. Together in Solidarity. OUR AFSCME the voice of the rank-and-file