Public Employees are tired of being treated as second class citizens.  These employees entered into contracts with the State regarding their retirements. Now, Bobby Jindal is trying to eliminate the validity of these contracts. We are asking the Legislation to support our public employees in expressing their concerns in opposition of any proposed pension reform bills that violate the contract between the employees and the State.

   We are also asking the public employees, in addition to their family and friends, to continue calling their Legislators to express their opposition for the privatizing, the leasing, or the selling of our Charity Hospital System. Public employees who work in our health institutions are experiencing their jobs being taken away and awarded to private health institutions without considering the devasting impact that it has on the employees' years of service, pensions, salaries, and essentially the quality of life that they have strived for.  

I encourage you:

Continue the fight, continue to support, continue to answer the call. Show support in solidarity for those brothers and sisters across this state in your local areas.  SUPPORT THEM BY MAKING THE NUMBERS COUNT. Continue to call your state Legislators in your districts and let them know that you oppose the selling of our Charity Hospital System. 

Yours For A Better Tomorrow

Leonal Hardman, President
AFSCME, Council 17

 Cash balance plan passed last year has been ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court. 

-Ed Parker 

Field Staff Representative

 To Watch the video interview click the link below: 

media.lpb.org/CBEAT130430b_iPod.mp4

 MEDIA RELEASE FOR TUESDAY, APRIL 30

CONTACT: Helen Cox, 404-432-5540, hcox@afscme.org

TODAY LOUISIANANS GATHER AT CAPITOL TO SAY “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!”

Community members demand a common-sense state budget that puts working families first.

BATON ROUGE — Rallying under the banner of “Enough Is Enough,” 500 people from across Louisiana came together to demand a common-sense state budget that puts working families first. On the steps of the state Capitol, participants called on the Legislature to reject Governor Bobby Jindal’s policies and adopt an agenda for the common good. Access to healthcare, strong public services such as education and strong environmental protections were among the issues discussed. 

Leonal Hardman, President of AFSCME Council 17, spoke out at the event saying, “Public employees entered into contracts with the State regarding their retirements and now, Bobby Jindal is trying to eliminate the validity of these contracts. Public employees are tired of being treated as second class citizens.” Mr. Hardman went on to discuss the need to save Charity Hospital from privatization, which would undermine quality service and cut good jobs. He left the crowd fired up and ready to keep fighting for a better Louisiana.

Of the 500 rally participants, approximately 50 of them were independent cab drivers from New Orleans. They are currently working to build their union with AFSCME Council 17, to gain a voice in creating stronger cab services for residents and visitors to their city. Other groups who supported the rally en masse were the NAACP, Women Against Domestic Violence, AFSCME workers and retirees, teachers and the IBEW.

AFSCME's 1.6 million members provide the vital services that make America happen. With members in hundreds of different occupations — from nurses to corrections officers, child care providers to sanitation workers — AFSCME advocates for fairness in the workplace, excellence in public services and prosperity and opportunity for all working families.

 Bobby Jindal is an everyday disaster for those pursuing the American dream through higher education.

In healthcare, the Governor has used a relatively small reduction in federal Medicaid support as an excuse to destroy the state’s public hospital system. Concentrating the cuts in the LSU hospitals was a policy choice by the Governor. Striking hastily negotiated deals with hospital operators in some markets has made the state of Louisiana the arbiter of winners and losers in healthcare markets in Lafayette, New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Lake Charles. The winners will (if the deals are approved by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) gain access to substantial federal streams of Medicaid dollars.

The losers in these deals are the thousands of loyal employees who worked to make the LSU hospitals the most cost-effective healthcare delivery system in the state. The losers are the patients who depend on these hospitals for care and for medicine. The losers are those working age Louisianans who can’t afford health insurance, who have relied on those LSU hospitals as a place to get the care they need in order to survive. Louisiana has had a charity hospital system for longer than there’s been a United States of America. Bobby Jindal decided he wants to end that.

But it’s gotten even worse lately. The Governor is refusing to allow Louisiana to participate in Medicaid expansion, a program that even his own Department of Health & Hospitals says will save the state money and bring health insurance coverage to about 577,000 Louisianans who currently do not have health insurance.

Bobby Jindal is an everyday disaster for Louisianans who can’t afford health insurance.

If you’re a public employee, Bobby Jindal wants to get rid of your job and take away what little retirement security you might have. He brags about how many state jobs he’s eliminated and last year launched a concerted attack on the retirement security of state workers. He’s attacked public school teachers through an untested evaluation program designed to rob teachers of essential due process protections. He’s tried to raid state and local public education funding sources to private school operators, some of whom didn’t even have classrooms, much less a track record.

Bobby Jindal is an everyday disaster for all things public in Lousiana — public education, public infrastructure, public employees.

So, we come to Baton Rouge today as disaster communities uniting to say that we’ve had enough. Enough of the cuts. Enough of taking from working families and giving to corporations and the wealthy and calling that ‘tough times.’ Enough of the looting of public infrastructure and services. Enough of the Governor trying to gain national attention at the expense of the people of our state.

We come to Baton Rouge today as a coalition to begin the recovery from the Jindal disaster. We call on legislators to begin the serious work of reversing the deep harm this Governor has inflicted on our state. Reversing that will take money. We call on the Legislature to suspend $2 Billion in tax exemptions in this session in order to stop the damage and to begin to reverse the cuts in essential services inflicted on the people of our state by this governor.

These are the Governor’s policies, but legislators who stand idly by and let them go through will be co-owners of the damage that have proven so unpopular with the people of this state. So, we ask legislators: “Whose side are you on? The Governor’s? Or, the people? It’s time to decide.

*Pulled from the Enough is Enough Website:  www.louisianashadenough.org