Employee
Forum members plan to make their voices heard later this month
in Raleigh, and they hope other employees will join them.
The forum will go to a May 26 "State Employee
Appreciation Rally" at the state capitol, organized by the State
Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC).
The rally will start at 1 p.m., but SEANC
is encouraging state workers to take time beforehand to lobby
legislators for better pay and benefits.
"We cannot just sit back and wait,"
said Ernie Patterson, the forum delegate who brought up the
issue at the group's May 5 meeting.
Delegates said they would attend the rally
as representatives of the forum and promote their own agenda.
That agenda includes a call for the General Assembly to grant
all state employees a flat raise of $2,000 for 2004-05, as well
as performance-pay bonuses to qualifying workers. The forum
also has called for the minimum wage for state employees to
be raised to $10. Gov. Mike Easley's budget proposal for next
year includes a 2 percent raise and $250 bonus. (See page 1
story for details.)
The forum codified those positions in
a resolution that was sent to Chancellor James Moeser. According
to forum chair Tommy Griffin, Moeser has forwarded the document
to Molly Corbett Broad, president of the UNC system.
Along with going to the Raleigh rally
themselves, forum members will encourage other Carolina employees
to take a vacation day so that they can attend as well.
Laurie Charest, associate vice chancellor
for Human Resources, was at the forum's May 5 meeting and said
the work of the University still will have to get done that
day, and supervisors would have to approve employees' vacation
requests.
Patterson said he knows that not all employees
will be able to go, but "It's important to ask, and it's important
to go, if you can go."
The forum also plans to hold voter registration
and get-out-the-vote drives on campus before November elections,
although members will be prohibited from using work time to
do so.
"The only thing they (legislators)
understand is voting," Patterson said.
