Sisters and Brothers:
I’ve heard from members over the years that our union shouldn’t be involved in politics or political action. Many members think it’s all about endorsing candidates for elective office. That’s just one small part.
The real strength of our union political action, however, is our ability to use our collective “people power” to exert influence with elected officials. This happens when we come together and get involved to push for legislation that benefits working families, or against legislation that would harm us.
Our power comes from when we all take time to write a letter, send a text or email, or make a phone call to our representatives to let them know how legislation will either help or harm us. Maybe we take further action like attending a rally, talking to our representative in person, or sharing information with our fellow members in social media posts. There are so many ways we can make our voices heard.
Our union works hard to make this easy for you, by sharing information to educate members on the important issues we’re fighting and providing tools like our new online Legislative Action Center, which allows you to easily contact your elected officials with just a few mouse clicks.
Our collective involvement makes the difference. Because of it, we won some important victories this past legislative session.
We were able to pass legislation that protects highway workers in their work zones, ensures child care workers get timely subsidy payments through direct deposit, improves staffing ratios for nursing home workers, protects direct care jobs in OPWDD and provides certain veterans additional credit toward Civil Service examinations.
We also prevented several bills from being passed which would have negatively impacted CSEA members.
I hope this helps you better understand the important work we’ve accomplished together through political action. Thankfully, whenever we ask for your involvement, many of you step up to fight the good fight.
Because our terms of employment and working conditions are set by elected officials, we can’t afford to sit these fights out.
I thank every member who took the time to get involved in our political fights. Working together, we made our voices heard and flexed the political muscle that none of us have individually. That’s what our union allows us to do.
In Solidarity,
Mary E. Sullivan, President
