University Employees ‘Rally for Fairness’ in Philadelphia

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.afscme.org/publications/17990.cfm

April 11, 2008

Hundreds of Temple University employees – members of Local 1723 (Council 47) – took their campaign for a fair contract to the public on April 1 with a campus rally to pressure administrators to stop demanding an unfair and discriminatory performance-based pay scheme.

The union, which represents more than 700 technical, professional and administrative employees (including laboratory managers, programmers, analysts, accountants, dental assistants, research assistants, social workers and others), has been trying to renew its contract since October 2007.


‘RALLY FOR FAIRNESS’ – Hundreds of Temple University employees – members of Local 1723 (Council 47) – and their supporters marched through the university to pressure administrators to work with them to reach a fair contract.

Photo Credit: Addison Geary


The key sticking points in negotiations are wages and health care costs, but the dispute boils down to fairness, says Local 1723 Pres. Paul Dannenfelser:

“Temple is proposing a so-called merit-based system that will not guarantee all our workers a fair cost-of-living raise. It would be placed in the hands of supervisors, but it wouldn’t be challengeable. That’s not right. We want to be sure everybody is able to keep pace with the cost of living.”

The university has enough money to pay its top officials well, “but it’s not being shared with the workers,” Dannenfelser notes. In addition, the administration wants to increase employee co-pays for family health coverage from about 14 percent to 18 percent over four years. “That would eat nearly 2 percent of any raise our members receive,” he says.

Addressing the crowd, AFSCME International Pres. Gerald W. McEntee condemned the university’s health insurance proposal, saying, “We should be making health care more affordable, not less!” He also offered this:

“1723 is the test case. If the university can achieve their goals with this local, if they can ram these mean-spirited and divisive proposals through, workers in each and every other union on this campus are at risk. So we’re not just standing together as the sisters and brothers of AFSCME Local 1723. We are standing together as all the workers who keep Temple University open for business!”

Read more about the contract dispute on Local 1723’s website and this story in The Temple News.