LOCAL 207 ORGANIZER

AFSCME negotiators and the City have started contract bargaining again. AFSCME’S settlement offer is only marginally better than the 5-year agreement that was rejected by the members earlier this year. Management has not accepted this offer. Local 207 President John Riehl and Local 2920 President Emily Kunze urge all locals to reject this sellout if it’s presented for ratification.

AFSCME SETTLEMENT

OFFER TO CITY

(Differences from Rejected 5-year Offer)

· 2 year wage freeze – 3-year contract with no raises for 2001 or 2002, no retro, and a 2% raise on July 1, 2003

· 16 additional classifications would get 50¢ wage adjustments on top of the 2% on July 1, 2003

· $600 one-time bonus (before taxes). The rejected contract had a $400 bonus

· Seven-day operations workers could still call in 2 hours into their shifts.

Since this offer made AFSCME look weak, management’s initial response was to nickel-and-dime AFSCME, claiming that they couldn’t even afford that! Still, we may be asked to ratify some version of this offer soon. If so, vote no!

Negotiations only started up again because Kilpatrick is politically vulnerable:

· He is having trouble protecting his crooked cop friends

· His endorsement of Gil Hill was the kiss of death

· Voters rejected 3 of his 4 bond proposals

· His attempt to fire to AFSCME officers was defeated.

Kilpatrick needs to settle city workers’ contracts now. But here’s an example of Garrett’s strategy at work. At a recent convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Garrett urged the union officials attending to defend Kilpatrick against the storm or criticism he’s facing. By contrast a UAW International Vice-President at the convention defended city workers against Kilpatrick!

Instead of pushing this sellout contract offer, Garrett should be mobilizing the members to fight back, publicly declaring that city workers will no longer be treated like “second-class citizens.” City workers are in a strong position now. The last thing Kilpatrick needs is a city-wide strike.

City workers have a ready-made opportunity to show our anger and our determination to be treated fairly. We should all attend the NAACP-sponsored Civil Rights March on Saturday, June 28^th, the 40^th anniversary of the 1963 Detroit March where Martin Luther King first made his “I Have a Dream” speech. This is a build-up to the August 23 March on Washington, 40 years after King’s famous March on Washington.

Racism determines the conditions of our lives. Examples of this fact are in the news every day. Detroit’s health system is threatened with shutdown. Kilpatrick and Granholm recently collaborated to deny us the right to elect our own School Board for another year. Meanwhile, the appointed Board continues to degrade our children’s education with school closings, layoffs and privatization.

Our contract is a civil rights issue for city workers and other Detroit residents. We deserve the same wages and equipment as the suburban contractors who are taking our jobs. Second-class treatment of Detroit city workers means second-class city services for Detroit residents.

Kilpatrick is laying off 102 city workers, and he tried to close 6 rec centers. But our neighborhoods need more city workers to provide better city services, cleaner parks and more rec centers, not less. Detroit youth are losing their jobs and futures to the suburban contractors. Kilpatrick’s overtime ban is part of the privatization scheme, merely creating more jobs for the contractors. And Minergy, a corporation seeking to privatize the incineration of Detroit’s sewage sludge, is now seeking a revised burning permit, which would allow it to burn high-sulfur coal along with the sludge (environmental racism).

The Water Department is closing Heavy Repair July 7^th. While the workers are being promised jobs in their titles in other Maintenance & Repair yards, much of the work may end up being contracted out, with individual contactors making more money than city workers, plus profits for the companies.

AFSCME Detroit Presidents voted to attend the June 28^th March, and to raise the issue of our contract. All city workers should come to this March with signs demanding that city workers be treated like first-class citizens for a change.

We must use this march to demand the social and economic justice and equality that M. L. King gave his life fighting for. King died while supporting the AFSCME sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee. The fight for civil rights is not a history lesson, it’s ongoing. The righteous anger displayed by the residents of Benton Harbor last week is just the tip of the ice berg.

The battle over affirmative action is also crucial to our nation’s fate, and has become the lynch pin in the fight for all equality. Saturday’s March will largely be a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the U of M cases, which are expected any day. We must build a movement that combines the fight for integration and equal rights in education, on the job and in all aspects of our lives.

Local 207 is helping to build a new civil rights movement, a movement whose power was announced to the nation on April 1^st when 50,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. for affirmative action, integration and equality. This March was organized by the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action & Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).

The April 1^st March was the beginning of a renewed national fight for real integration and equality. Win or lose in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases, BAMN is fighting on to “realize the promise of Brown”, the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared that separate could not be equal.

The new civil rights movement is fighting for equality throughout our society, including equal education, equal health care, equal city services and equal treatment for city workers. Join the BAMN contingent at the Saturday, June 28^th March. Let everyone know that Detroit city workers will not sit at the back of the economic bus.