WATTS RESPONDS TO OUTRAGEOUS EDITORIAL SUPPLEMENT IN D&C

CSEA Local 828 President Bess Watts

(photo by Ove Overmyer)

Rochester, N.Y.--  In a response dated March 22 aimed at highlighting our continued disappointment with a media giant and their relentless coverage that misinforms their readership about the realities of public employee unions and working families, Local 828 President Bess Watts fired off a letter to editors at the Gannett owned Rochester daily newspaper denouncing their coverage as "bias" and "anti-worker." 

On Sunday March 21, the D&C did a three page supplement (Fed Up With Albany Special Report) blaming public employee unions for the recession and budget problems of an inept state legislature and governor.  Most informed readers know that the recession was not caused by the janitor who cleans the Monroe County Office Building-- it was caused by eight years of Bush tax-breaks for the rich, unregulated predatory bank lenders, a housing bubble that burst and greedy Wall Street executives taking home exorbitant bonuses.  Her letter reads as follows: 

Dear D&C Editor,

I’m disappointed with the obvious bias demonstrated by the Democrat & Chronicle in the recent editorial page concerning public employees. The enormous cartoon and caption was clearly anti-worker.

In 1978, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the ratio of CEO salary to the average worker was 35 to 1; it is now 275 to 1. The working class is not the problem. Rather than write about jobs being shipped overseas, unregulated banks and Wall Street greed, it appears you find it easier to bash the public sector and pit worker against worker, taxpayer against taxpayer.

Anyone can retire with a public sector pension: pass a civil service test, get hired and work 25 years. It is not an exclusive club. The middle class is shrinking because of corporate greed and yet you advocate to strip yet another group of workers of financial security in retirement.

Sincerely,

Bess Watts
President, CSEA Monroe County Local 828
167 Flanders Street
Rochester, New York 14619

We posted this letter in hopes that we can set the record straight and tell our side of the story.  We are not encouraged by Gannett's inability to be fair and balenced when it comes to the first admendment.  Letters to the editor from our Local members often go unanswered or are ignored.  Special reports and opinion comments that are disquised to read like credible journalistic news is doing a huge disservice to our community. 

The D&C has crossed the line again-- their anti-worker and anti-union agenda-laden rhetoric will not go unchallenged.  We submit that they were not just raising questions and sparking debate, they were pointing fingers and blaming middle class workers as the culprits to our state's fiscal crisis.  That notion is totally absurd and inexcusable.

(photo by Ove Overmyer)