We are nearing the end of the current legislative session, but not the end of our work. Please read below for updates and actions that you can take today to help secure better wages for all New Mexico state and university workers:
BUDGET AND RAISES
The biggest battle we have in the last 8 days of the session is to try to improve the across-the-board raises for state employees. The administration introduced a proposal for 3% for every state employee, with more for corrections and state police. The most important action you can take now: call and email Governor Lujan Grisham and ask her to support at least a 6% raise for state employees. Her phone is 505-476-2200 and you can email here: https://www.governor.state.nm.us/contact-the-governor/
In addition to calling the Governor's office, the next most important action to take right now is to keep calling and emailing Senate Finance Committee members to ask for at least a 6% across-the-board raise. With the administration pushing for only 3% and refusing to negotiate raises with us, a higher amount right now is a long shot but is worth fighting for until the very end of the session.
The most common refrain we're hearing from the administration and the legislators she's partnering with is that with a huge classification and compensation study due in May, they want to have more money available to fund raises according to the results of the study. While we look forward to the study and more robust funding in next year's session, there is simply no reason not to support better raises this year so that we don't continue to lose more workers in all our agencies and departments.
Email the SFC in just a few clicks!
Calls are best done between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm on weekdays, but you can and should send emails whenever you're able to. If you only have time for a few calls, start at the top of the list—that's the Chair and Vice Chair, as well as some of our best potential allies in this fight. Thanks!
Senate Finance Committee members:
Chair George Muñoz (D-Gallup) 505-986-4371
Vice Chair Nancy Rodriguez (D-Santa Fe) 505-986-4264
Ranking Member Bill Sharer (R-Farmington) 505-986-4381
Pete Campos (D-Las Vegas) 505-986-4311
Bobby Gonzales (D-Ranchos de Taos) 505-986-4362
Siah Correa Hemphill (D-Silver City) 505-986-4863
Michael Padilla (D-Albuquerque) 505-986-4737
Jeff Steinborn (D-Las Cruces) 505-986-4862
Bill Burt (R-Alamogordo) 505-986-4366
Crystal Diamond Brantley (R-Elephant Butte) 505-986-4703
Pat Woods (R-Broadview) 505-986-4393
OTHER LEGISLATION
AFSCME continues to battle for our members every day of the legislative session. Currently we are fighting against a resolution urging Congress to pass a law expanding privatization of public services like water, wastewater, roads, bus services, parking, and virtually anything else involving infrastructure. That resolution is Senate Joint Memorial 1, sponsored by Albuquerque Democratic Senator Bill Tallman. We have already succeeded in taking out all the sections of a public-private partnership bill that could have impacted AFSCME members. That bill is HB 190, sponsored by Albuquerque Democratic Representative Joy Garratt.
For the first time in 15 years, AFSCME has persuaded cities, counties, and the state to limit return to work (otherwise known as "double dipping") to frontline public safety positions. In addition to that strict limitation that should provide relief to our over-worked, understaffed members who face mandatory overtime, we have protected PERA's solvency in the bill (both by requiring payments by double dippers with no new service credit or salary re-calculations and also requiring that any returning worker have already been retired before this year), putting in a 36-month limit on any returning worker, ending entry into the program three years from now, protecting current workers against layoffs, preserving current workers' seniority for shift-bidding, forbidding bringing back workers if the job's vacancy rate is under 10%, and tracking all returning workers to ensure no abuse, as unfortunately happened in the 2000s. Those bills are HB 236 (sponsored by House Majority Leader Gail Chasey and Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, both Albuquerque Dems, and Minority Leader Ryan Lane, a Republican from Aztec) and SB 87 (sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Craig Brandt, a Rio Rancho Republican).
AFSCME is leading a coalition to defeat a binding resolution calling on Congress to enact a U.S. Constitutional Convention. If 34 states pass such a resolution, literally every constitutional protection we've had for centuries will be on the table, including basic freedoms like the right of association which guarantees the existence of unions, free speech rights, and the ability of the federal government to help support the state and local programs our members implement every day. The resolution is HJR 12 and is sponsored by three Republican Representatives.
AFSCME is also a supporter of the good Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, which would grant workers up to 12 weeks for the birth or adoption of a child, a serious illness, or taking care of a close family member with serious illness. Republicans and conservative Dems are banding together to weaken the bill, but we continue to partner with other unions and allies to try to get as strong a bill as possible. The best PFML bills are HB 6, sponsored by Democratic Representatives Linda Serrato (Santa Fe), Patricia Roybal-Caballero (Albuquerque), and Christine Chandler (Los Alamos) and SB 3, sponsored by Democratic Senator Mimi Stewart (Albuquerque).
Similarly, AFSCME supports the prescription drug transparency act to help hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and lower drug costs for New Mexicans. That bill is HB 33 and is sponsored by Democratic Representative Pam Herndon (Albuquerque).
There are other bills affecting workers like tax bills to gut state revenue, which would leave us with pay cuts and furloughs, that AFSCME and our allies are fighting. We are optimistic that we'll be able to fend off the ones that impact revenue in any significant way, but it's still a battle.
Please keep making calls and emails in support of higher raises, and never stop fighting for yourself, your family, and your co-workers. You ARE the union and your commitment to better pay, benefits, working conditions, and workplace fairness is what makes us all succeed.
