UE Local 170 encourages all members to attend at least one of the June and July PEIA Finance Board Public Hearings on the Plan to Transition Retirees out of retiree health insurance coverage.
· This reduction in the pay of future public workers will increase the problem of recruiting qualified employees. Because of the historically low pay for state workers the benefit program has always been a recruitment tool. Finance Board reductions of benefits amounts to a pay cut for West Virginia public workers.
· PEIA Finance Board decisions are being made without the consent of the covered employees who have no say in the terms of their employment. “Retiree representative” Joe Smith, a contract employee on the Governor’s staff, has also been enforcing the state employee merit pay freeze while getting thousands of dollars in raises.
· Creating a pay differential among current and future workers will create animosity and increase low morale. It creates separate and unequal treatment of workers charged with the same tasks and working the same hours who should be fairly compensated.
· Decisions by members of the Finance Board continue to erode the economic security of working West Virginia families by reducing benefit coverage, increasing out of pocket expenses and now eliminating benefits altogether.
· The PEIA Finance Board should immediately return to its principle mission of providing the employee health benefit component of the state pay plan.

Those locations and dates can be found on the PEIA website: http://webapps.wv.gov/Offsite.aspx?u=http://www.wvpeia.com/
The six Public Hearing dates are:
Monday, June 22, 2009 Ballroom, One Tamarack Park, Beckley, WV
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Holiday Inn, 301 Fox Croft Avenue, Martinsburg, WV
Monday, June 29, 2009 Civic Center Little Theater, 200 Civic Center Drive, Charleston, WV
Tuesday, June 30, 2009 WV Northern Community College, 1704 Market Street, Wheeling, WV
Monday, July 6, 2009, Ramada Inn, 20 Scott Avenue, Morgantown, WV
Tuesday, July 7, 2009, Marshall University Medical School Harless Auditorium, 1600 Medical Center Drive, Huntington, WV

All Public Hearings start at 6:00 pm, Registration (to speak) 5:30 to 6:00 pm. Public Hearings are from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.

If you sign in before 6:00, we believe that you will be allowed to speak. If you arrive after 6:00 pm and wish to speak, that process could be subject to the discretion of the PEIA managment running the hearing.

Join UE Today!
“Feeling harassed? Discriminated against? Are you unfairly paid? Is your workplace unsafe? This is a wake-up call.

Now is a critical time for those committed to building a worker-run union for public employees to take action. We face continued assaults on benefits, stagnant wages, a flawed grievance process and an administration intent on privatizing public services.We, the public workers of West Virginia, must do this for ourselves—we cannot depend on anyone else to do this for us.

Workplace activists employed by the state of West Virginia are urged to join the West Virginia Public Workers Union, UE Local 170 and help build it by attending the organizing committee meetings and strategy workshops.Please join us in our fight to improve working conditions for West Virginia public workers. Now is the time to join up and stand up for your rights.

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