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News :: Labor
Unions Picket Against 'frontline' Layoffs At UIUC Current rating: 0
01 May 2003
Modified: 01:47:03 PM
AFSCME and other unions demonstrated against job cuts expected to impact 'frontline' workers at the University of Illinois.
(Urbana) About 65 supporters and members of unions representing university employees held an informational picket on the corner of Green and Wright Streets at noon on Workers' Memorial Day, April 28, 2003. Picketers said the state budget should not be balanced on the backs of the "frontline" workers, but any cuts should impact upper level administration. The University of Illinois is facing $130 million in cuts over two years, with record enrollments of 71,000 statewide this spring.

"We don't want layoffs on the frontlines," said Greg Homerding, staff representative for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 698, the union that organized the Monday picket.

UI president James Stukel testified in March that is "on the brink" and has exhausted all financial flexibility. But the unions told a slightly different story.

"I'm still amazed at the layers of bureaucracy at this University," said AFSCME president Jerry Wright. Addressing the picketers from a low wall outside campus buildings, Wright said it is too easy to simply cut jobs when the budget is in trouble. "I was one of those workers during the Reagan Depression," he said. "I was unemployed for eleven months. And I wouldn't want that to happen to anybody else."

Dale Hillier of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73, agreed that there is a better way to balance the budget. "Over at the Illini Union," Hillier said, "there's one foreman for every five workers. The University says that Springfield says we have to do this [layoffs], but Springfield is looking at the bureaucracy. We need to cut that!"

But misplaced priorities apparently go deeper than labor. Last year, Wright noted, "the government wanted to balance the budget on the backs of children." But unions know a better place to get the needed money: "The $1 billion in tax breaks for corporations!"

Political Call to Action

Kevin Sandefur of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), and president of the local AFL-CIO, reminded workers of the need for political action.

"This is Workers' Memorial Day," Sandefur said, "a day when we remember to mourn the dead and fight for the living." Each year in the US an estimated 6000 workers are killed on the job and 50,000 die of occupational diseases. Millions more are injured, including 1.8 million workers crippled or injured each year due to ergonomic hazards at work.

"This is not just a historical fight," Sandefur said. "It's current. We fought for an ergonomic standard for over ten years, and the Bush Administration through it out the window." It will be a tough fight, he said, "but we showed 'em in Illinois last year, and we have to take that lesson to the whole country."

Saying the job cuts identified by the University are "the tip of the iceberg", Sandefur called for organized action.

"First," he said, "we've got to change the [University's] corporate mindset." Reminding picketers of the "meltdown" at American Airlines, where top executives recently announced 100 percent raises for themselves on the heels of concessions demanded of union employees. "We have the same mentality here at the U of I," he said. "But this is not a corporation. It's a public body. It's a family. And you can't balance the budget on the backs of the people who do the work to keep the doors open."

Second, Sandefur said, "the power structure in Springfield is there in part because labor put it there. So they had better listen. AFSCME and SEIU showed the way last year, but they weren't very receptive. We think they will be better now. They had better be."

Third, Sandefur said, "we have to pull together. We need organized action. There are people in the crowd here today who may not have a job next year."
See also:
http://http//:www.aflcio.org
http://htp://www.afscme.org
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