Protect Collective Bargaining Rights

Level of Government: State

As your constituent and a union member, I am writing this letter to call for your support for the protection of public sector collective bargaining rights and to ask for your help in ending attacks on public employees.

Teachers and other public employees have come under vicious and unfair attacks. Ideological opponents to the very idea of organized labor are trying to use the current economic condition of both the state and the nation to wage class warfare on teachers and other public servants by destroying labor rights which we, together with elected officials like you, have spent decades fighting for. Right-wing Wall Street hedge fund managers dedicated to union busting and the privatization of public education are funding multimillion-dollar ads attacking teacher unions while subsiding phony organizations that claim to be pushing an education reform agenda but are in reality only interested in gutting basic labor rights and worker protections.

Anti-labor ideologues are attacking civil service seniority protections that have been in place since the 1940's to protect against abusive practices of basing layoffs on race, age, sex, religion, political affiliation, cronyism, family status, salary level or other non-objective standards. These same opponents are to trying to destroy the fully funded defined benefit pension system that retired public employees count on to help them live the remainder of their lives with dignity. The very idea of public workforce that can collectively bargain for better working conditions is being challenged by some elected officials in New York and around the nation in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana.

I ask that during the course of this legislative session, you work to protect public employees from being stripped of their collective bargaining rights, commit to protecting the fully funded public pension systems in New York state and oppose the efforts of the numerous anti-labor forces that seek to destroy the basic labor rights that cover New York's employees.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Your Name Here