Legislative

lobday

CFT members sometimes wonder why their union is involved in politics. Unions have never been and will never be exclusively collective bargaining organizations, because economic muscle at the workplace is always dependent on the political environment. An example: two thirds of funding for local school districts comes from the state of California. Decisions by state legislators matter at least as much as local school board members to the welfare of our students.

CFT SACRAMENTO STAFF
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , CFT Legislative Director		This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , CFT Legislative Representative
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , CFT Legislative Representative		This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , CFT Political Director

Rallies call on legislators, governor, to do right thing

June 17, Oakland—Berkeley Federation of Teachers president Cathy Campbell (with mic) called for the legislators and governor to close corporate tax loopholes, not schools and health clinics, at a rally held this morning in front of the state building in downtown Oakland. Behind Campbell is a protester dressed as a blind Governor Schwarzenegger, holding aloft scales of justice tilted toward "cuts" instead of taking action on "tax loopholes." At left, in pink, is Laney student Sarah French, and to her right is Linda Leu, of Health Access California.

Only you can stop The Incredible Shrinking Budget

Sacramento, June 8—The 2008-09 budget has been worked on since January 10, 2008 (a full 16 months) and the Legislature has only 23 days left to work on it. In September of 2008, the 2008-09 budget was passed to fund Prop 98 at $58.1 billion. The current proposal cuts the 2008-09 budget to $49.1 billion

On Monday, June 1, 2009, theoretically a full 2 weeks before the proposed $15 billion cuts to the state budget are to be implemented, a joint legislative committee, called “the Budget Conference Committee,” met to hear from the public on the Governor's proposed budget cuts for everything from early childcare to the university system.

With only Friday, Saturday and Sunday to obtain our goal of 5 CFT speakers to address the meaning of the cuts, we were successful in getting Robert Jones from Local 6084, Cathy Campbell from Local 1078, Mat Taylor and Dan Barnhart from Local 1021 to speak on the certificated and classified cuts to K-12, and Ed Murray from Local 2121 to speak on the community college cuts. Even though it took them a few hours to get to Sacramento they only had 90 seconds to express their concerns. They all did an excellent job in spite of the lack of information from the Governor and lack of time.

Member after member shared stories about the drastic events within their schools and also demanded more revenues, that is, additional progressive taxes. By the responses of the legislators on the committee, we were definitely heard.

About CFT

Resources

Taking Action