Sullivan
Our President, Danny Donohue, is currently home recovering from a surgical procedure and is doing very well.
He sends his best wishes to all of you and is looking forward to returning to work as soon as he is able. Until then, I am holding down the fort as Acting President, and I am looking forward to working with all of you to continue moving our union forward.
Many of you have approached me personally over the years sharing how much you resent our political involvement. And I get it — politics can get messy, many of us are passionate about our beliefs, and none of us like feeling we are being told what to do, or how to vote.
The truth is that political involvement is how we get stuff done. The laws on the books today that establish our pensions and worker rights are there because members just like you and I got involved in the political process and made our voices heard.
You may be retired, but that doesn’t lessen everything that is at stake for you. When times get tough, many politicians think that your pensions and health insurance are expendable.
It’s our job to show them how wrong they are to cut the retirement security that you have earned.
We are always evaluating how our representatives, on every level of government, have historically voted on important retiree issues. As public retirees, we have the advantage of voting on people who make the important decisions on your pensions, health insurance and other important retiree benefits such as Social Security and Medicare.
We need to get involved and have a role in these decisions. If we fail to get involved, the results could not only be devastating to you, but to those who are still working.
On the center spread of this issue, you will read about how Wisconsin’s labor movement was swiftly decimated by a single piece of legislation in 2011. That legislation was successful, in large part, because of workers’ political apathy. By the time everyone realized what had happened — that their collective bargaining rights had been ripped out from under them — it was already too late.
It’s a cautionary tale, but we need to learn from it and not take our rights for granted. We also need to get involved in another issue — defeating November’s Constitutional Convention ballot referendum.
If voters approve a convention, our pensions are in jeopardy. During a constitutional convention, everything in our state constitution is on the table, open for change. Many of those who support a convention also mistakenly believe that your pensions are excessive; a gift.
We all know that nothing we have is a gift — we have earned our pensions. We have the right to a dignified, secure retirement.
Sisters and brothers, we cannot afford to be apathetic with the attacks on workers and retirees continuing to build. Let’s look at the big picture. If you care about your communities and your family’s security, we need to join together.
Interested in getting involved? You can call me personally and I’ll get you in the mix. That’s how serious I am about this.
I hope to hear from you soon!
