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News Conference Alert: Monday, 2/21, noon, 16 W. Jones Street
More Information Call: Ms. Amina J. Turner, 919-682-4700
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, 919-837-3194
Mr. Al McSurely, 919-389-2905
Mr. Saladin Muhammad, 252-314-2363
Leaders from the Labor, Faith and Civil Rights Community will hold a News Conference in front of the State Legislature, 16 W. Jones Street, at noon on Monday, February 21. They will express their solidarity with Wisconsin public workers whose unionization and collective bargaining rights are under attack and to call for repeal of the 1959 N.C. law that banned collective bargaining here.
Immediately following the News Conference, they will deliver to General Assembly leaders the International Labor Organization’s ruling that North Carolina’s prohibition against public employees collective bargaining rights violates international labor law.
The News Conference begins at noon at 16 W. Jones Street, Raleigh, Monday, February 21st.
Labor, Faith and Civil Rights Unite in Defense of the Public Sector
Joint Statement of N.C. NAACP; Public Service Union-UE150; and a Growing List of Endorsers
Released at Noon, Monday, Feb. 21, 2011, 16 W. Jones Street at News Conference
The attacks on public sector worker rights to unionization and collective bargaining in Wisconsin
and other states is part of a frontal attack on the entire public sector throughout the country. These
attacks seek to put anti-labor,"right-to-work" laws on the books to weaken and eliminate vital public
services provided by public sector workers–services that working and poor people depend upon
everywhere.
Public sector workers are the targets of these attacks. Their jobs, wages, pensions, and health
care are all being cut. The communities of working and poor people are also the targets, since
they will suffer deep cuts in vital services. Teachers and other public school workers, necessary for
students to experience a diverse, high quality education, are the targets also.
The attack on the public sector is especially devastating to African Americans. Public sector work
is the source of at least 30% of Black employment. Public service pensions contribute significantly
to the increasingly bleak economic stability of the minority community, in the face of massive
unemployment, housing foreclosures, closing of public schools, and neighborhood gentrification.
State and local government budget proposals are made in back-rooms. Governors and legislators
hand out big tax breaks to their rich contributors in closed meetings. Their decisions to dismantle the
public sector have no real input from working and poor people directly and negatively impacted by
them. We need a democratically-created People’s Budget!
We come together today representing the labor, faith and civil rights communities, united in our
defense of the public sector. We are all part of the broader North Carolina progressive movement,
organized around the 14-Point Agenda of the HkonJ Peoples Assembly. We call for the North
Carolina legislature to repeal N.C.G.S. 95-98 which bans collective bargaining rights for public
sector workers here. We call on the N.C. legislature and the U.S. Dept. of Labor to implement the
ruling of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for North Carolina to establish a framework for
collective bargaining for public workers.
Today we submit the ILO ruling to the North Carolina Legislature as the first bill in a
democratically produced Peoples Budget. As we create this Peoples Budget, we will involve
thousands of people in their communities to draft bills and resolutions for their elected officials, to
bring to the General Assembly to shape the budget for 2011.
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