Administrative costs have already been cut to the bone. All purchases are now reviewed. Copier leases, postage meters, phones and phone cards were all renegotiated to save money. We reduced the number of copiers leased, and reduced the Executive Board mailings from once a week to an as needed basis.

Attempts have been made in the past to reduce the cost of the Executive Board and Convention by reducing the number of Board members and holding the convention every other year. The member-elected conventions have defeated these proposals.

PEF members should have the best representation in confrontations with management. The current representation structure of stewards, field representatives, and attorneys meets this need.

In 1993 we paid $8.55 and $4.95 per member per month to the AFT and SEIU respectively. In 1999 we paid $10.25 and $6.80 respectively to the internationals. This works out to over $5 million annually in the 2000-01 PEF budget. Over the next few years these membership assessments will grow significantly. SEIU's per member payment will rise to $12.65 by the year 2005 and AFT's is estimated to be $11.65 by the year 2003.

Almost half the funding for State agencies comes from the federal government. PEF needs a strong voice in Washington, and AFT and SEIU provide that voice. One of the primary reasons the internationals are raising their member assessments is to compete against an anti-union coalition of big business and right wing activists in Washington and elsewhere. These anti-public employee forces are well financed and are constantly advocating privatization and contracting out of services; examples of this agenda are the contracting out of employment assistance to disabled veterans and the weakening of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Both AFT and SEIU made significant contributions to our recent contract struggle, and provide significant staff assistance. Attempts to disaffiliate will be costly and most likely unsuccessful. We need to work together with our internationals to strengthen our political power in Washington; to do this costs money.

PEF’s dues structure was last changed in 1989. The chart below shows that PEF's dues are lower than those of other public employee unions in the state and any other similar union in the country.

PEF proved this year that contract patterns could be broken. We did it at least three times. CSEA's first contract settlement was clearly unsatisfactory to our members, with its lower annual salary increases and lack of pension improvements. Our local leaders and members, with the help of other concerned unions, were able to persuade the CSEA membership to vote down the contract, breaking the pattern.

PEF's highly visible contract struggle kept driving the State to progressively better settlements with UUP, the Teamsters (Thruway Authority), and the MTA. PEF pushed the state into an agreement dramatically better for CSEA than their rejected 1999 contract. To break a contract pattern PEF needs membership support, political strength, and recurring media campaigns. All of these require significant resources; PEF must have these resources available in a dedicated fund if we are to fight for improved contracts in the future.

A major reason this disparity exists is because our two previous contracts did not provide raises for our members in four of the eight years covered by the contracts. Better contracts reduce these disparities.

We have battled to have many title series reallocated to higher salary grades. We continue to fight for higher geographic and shift pay differentials as well as increased hiring rates for our members. In recent years, PEF has been successful in achieving upgrades for the Bank Examiner and Health Information Management Administrator title series. Currently, we are working with agency management for upgrades in Teaching, Nursing, Pharmacist, Physician Assistant, Nurse Practitioner, Insurance Examiner, Facility Parole Officer and other DOCS Program Services titles, as well as auditing titles within the Departments of Tax and Finance and Audit and Control.

Changing the levels of compensation outside of contract negotiations is an arduous process controlled by the Division of Budget with input from agency management, and generally requires recruitment and retention problems in the titles for which upgrades are sought. To succeed, we need the leverage of political power, as well as a strong case based on the merits.

We will continue to fight for proper levels of pay for all our members, but to succeed we need the increased political power and staff resources that a dues increase will support.

PEF’s officers’ salaries will remain at their current state salary grade. The current officers salaries are as follows: President Roger Benson (SG-31) - $75,343, Secretary/Treasurer Jane Hallum (SG-27) - $66,628, Vice-Presidents Joe Fox and Ken Brynien (SG-23) - $57,537.

Since these salaries are based on the PS&T salary schedule, the officers only get raises when the membership gets raises. Additionally, the PEF President also donates the $13,000 SEIU stipend to PEF that is received for serving on the SEIU Executive Board. He is the first PEF President not to accept this personal stipend.

The current administration pledged in early 1997 that they "will not support a dues increase." Trimming PEF's operating expenses provided enough savings over the last three years that a dues increase was not necessary. PEF can no longer cut operating expenses without compromising membership service and programs to build PEF's strength. Given the dramatic increases in mandated expenditures, the administration did not make this same pledge in their 2000 re-election campaign.

There is now a significant increase in membership assessments to the international unions and confirmation of the importance of financial resources when fighting for a fair contract. It would be irresponsible not to seek more money for that fight. Strength has its price.

Depleting the Contingency Fund to offset PEF’s ongoing operational expenses would be a temporary and fiscally imprudent fix similar to the State’s often criticized use of one-shot revenues. The Contingency Fund is the accumulation of surpluses from PEF's annual budgets and its use requires a two-thirds vote of the PEF Executive Board. The historical purpose of the Fund is for job security fights. It is unwise to use savings to pay for operating expenses particularly when PEF would be left with no dedicated funding for job security fights. The requirement for Executive Board approval makes this fund less useful in a contract fight. The Executive Board meets quarterly and a contract fight requires the ability to act quickly to respond to the State's actions.