Bing’s Imposes Contract Concessions, Council approves

AFSCME workers march at CAYMC

•  26 unpaid furlough days per year for 3 years (total 78 days) – equal to a three-year, 10% pay cut.\
• If your department decides to work you on some furlough days, Bing could force you to take unpaid furlough days at some other point within the year to make it up.
• If your spouse has health insurance available from his/her employer (regardless of how substandard or overpriced) the imposed contract requires that your spouse purchase their employer’s insurance as their primary insurance. The city worker could choose to pay to insure their spouse but that would be secondary insurance. This would cost many families thousands of extra dollars per year.
• No longevity pay.
• Overtime would not start until after you’ve worked 40 hours in a work week (sick time, O.J.I., jury duty, furlough days, etc. would not count as hours worked. For example, if you worked a double shift, management could schedule you off on an unpaid furlough day later in the pay period and you’d only get a straight 40 hour check for that week.
• If you’re scheduled off work on a holiday, but call in sick your last scheduled work day before or the day after the holiday, you won’t get paid for the holiday.
• When and if the payroll system is able to make the adjustments, management may insist that all paychecks be issued bi-weekly with mandatory direct deposit.
• Tuition refund eliminated for 3 years; after that it would only be available with 3 years seniority.
• There will be further negotiations and arbitration regarding City’s plan to enact generally harsher city-wide disciplinary guidelines, including longer suspensions.
• More limits on name brand drugs with the final decision made by health insurance companies. No more drugs for fertility or sexual dysfunction.
• Retiree health care benefits will now match current employee benefits; if you remarry after retiring, your new spouse and /or new dependents would no longer be covered by health insurance.    

City, school and county workers protest cuts outside Guardian Bldg.

Additional Concessions for Workers Hired After 9-28-10

• Less sick time accrual: reduced to 10 sick days per year (was 12 days), and no reserve sick leave.Less vacation days: 5 years seniority gets 5 days per year (was 10); 15 years seniority gets15 days (was 20).
• Swing holidays eliminated (was 4 per year – 3 during election years); bonus vacation days for good attendance are eliminated.
• No medical coverage until 91^st day (used to start when hired), optical after 6 months (used to start at 60^th day).
• Inferior healthcare insurance for first 5 years with higher deductibles for services (“Mercer Plan”); Blue Cross Traditional eliminated.

City Council Votes to Impose Concession Contract on AFSCME 

 Fights are not determined by who gets hit first, but by who gets hit last. The imposition of Bing’s contract concessions is a setback, but it is far from the end of the fight. Bing and his corporate backers will continue to come at us until we stop them. And we won’t stop fighting back until we win. Whatever legal recourses we have will be pursued. But, as these negotiations have shown, we will not win in the courtroom alone. We have said for years that if we didn’t strike we’d get screwed.   

  The chief reason that this contract was not in place two years ago is Local 207. At key moments our members showed up to make it clear that we would never vote accept these concessions. Over the summer of 2009 we sponsored large Community / Union meetings together with the civil rights group BAMN (The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary), and an organized caucus in the Detroit Federation of Teachers. The determination of Local 207 members and the fighting spirit of the young student activists in BAMN showed that it was possible to defend Detroit, our students, public education and public workers. This helped force Bing to back off most of his threatened bus cuts.   

 All of these attacks provide us with plenty of pissed-off allies. We can win if we take our place in the leadership of the civil rights battle to defend Detroit. Our city is under attack and unions can provide essential organization muscle. We must not isolate ourselves by seeing our situation as just another separate struggle for a piece of the pie. Our fates are tied to the fate of Detroit, even for those that don’t live in the city. The best way to win is to find the people who are as angry as you are and organize a force to be reckoned with. Bing will keep trying to push us into a corner, and we will have to keep fighting. With allies and a wider and more inspiring political perspective we will all fight and win! 

 We are rebuilding the coalition that we started building last year. The next coalition meeting is Monday October 4^th (see box below). Our first action is a March on Thursday October 7^th. We will keep building up our coalition to establish an alternative power and leadership in Detroit. If you want to stop Bing’s ongoing attacks on our jobs and our city, be there.  

Detroiters are being attacked from many angles. Public education is under assault with appointed DPS Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb attempting to destroy DPS, cower the teachers and relegate Detroit’s students to permanent second-class treatment. Continuing his privatization campaign, he’s now threatening to privatize janitorial and maintenance jobs. Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano is trying to force county workers to accept huge concessions. And Bing and the corporate-controlled foundations are trying to dismantle our city!