I belong to the Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO, the union that organizes and represents public employees who perform scientific, professional and technical services for New York. About 56,000 people belong to our union and statewide we perform literally thousands of essential roles.
When I was hired at my present position I welcomed the opportunity to join PEF. Our union provides an important way to stand up for our communities, our environment, our patients and each other. For example, thanks to unions, ours with others, registered nurses in New York are no longer subject to mandatory overtime, something proven to be vital for patient safety.
We need to nurture our society and our environment toward health and with science. This is the proper role for all public employees, from hospital caregiving to environmental conservation to engineering to taxation and finance to schools to the maintenance and development of our infrastructure.
With these things in mind I ran for union office, first as a steward. Then, when our Council Leader retired last year, I decided to seek the role of leader of the stewards for our division. This year I was also elected a member of the statewide Executive Board of PEF.
What a time to take up the union cause!
We now face the bared fangs of a major political offensive against public employees.
The offensive is really a defense. A defense of the indefensible.
It is a defense of three decades of tax cuts for the wealthy, with steep tax breaks and huge taxpayer subsidies for profitable corporations during a period of accelerating income inequality, a time of spectacular concentration of great wealth, a time in which the poor have grown even poorer.
Thirty years ago the wealthiest 1 percent of New Yorkers won about 10 percent of total income. Today the wealthiest 1 percent take more than 35 percent of the total income in New York state. In New York City they take 45 percent of the total.
In 1980 the āpoorerā one half of New Yorkers had an average income of $16,074. By 2007 this figure declined to $14,045! (Both figures in 2007 dollars: see the report by economist James Parrott.)
Not only have the rich gotten richer and the poor poorer, such yawning income inequality leads to poor health for the state as a whole. Convincing epidemiology shows that states and nations with greater income inequality are less healthy and have more social problems than those with more income equality. (See The Equality Trust.)
This month Forbes reported that New York is home to 68 billionaires.
68 billionaires!
New York is NOT broke!
Yet to close the state budget deficit our elected leaders have taken aim not at billionaires but at public employees. They blame the public sector for a crisis it did not create and have launched an assault upon public education, safety and health.
Will cutbacks and layoffs nurture a better future? Layoffs in the public sector will cause layoffs in the private sector. Will layoffs, closures and cuts strengthen or weaken our frayed social safety net, our weather-beaten infrastructure, our schools, our already-weakened environmental protections and our beleaguered economy?
We have experienced a time when the rich have grown so much richer than ever, especially here in New York. During the same period the wealthy have received tax break after tax break after tax break, with billions and billions of dollars in state revenue forfeited annually.
It is now time to tax the rich. But alas, not for our leading politicians. Their mission is to defend the millionairesā and billionairesā money, the bankersā bonuses and the corporationsā profits from taxation.
Against the defense of the indefensible, and in the interest of community health and social medicine, Iām sticking to the union.