And I’ll Sign The Letter to Prove It!
(Letter text is below the form)
Here’s the letter:
We work hard every day in our businesses, our houses of worship, and at our jobs to create a better life for our families and our community as a whole. We understand the important role played by public employees serve in our cities, counties, and state to protect and improve our communities. It’s all too easy to take for granted the nurses that risk infection to care for us when we are our most vulnerable, the fire fighters and public safety employees that risk their lives to keep us safe, the teachers who care for and educate our children, the snow-plow drivers, and garbage collectors that endure all types of weather to keep our neighborhoods functioning, connected and clean. Public employees are the everyday heroes that keep our communities safe and strong.
Unfortunately, out-of-state special interests are attacking the freedom of our public employees to negotiate their work contracts as they see fit, in addition to standard pay and benefit negotiations that occur with all jobs. These negotiations that include issues critical to how our communities function. Our public sector workers fight for their entire community when they negotiate their own employment contracts.
These negotiations have successfully been guided by Iowa’s Public Sector Collective Bargaining. This bi-partisan law, implemented by Republican Governor Robert Ray has done what it was intended to do: “promote harmonious and cooperative relationships.” Since its implementation, there have been no teachers strikes, no sanitation workers strikes, no firefighter strikes, no public sector strikes –no strikes in over 40 years.