When I ran for CFT president 4 years ago, I claimed that I had the combination of experience, skills, and dedication necessary to lead CFT to become a more dynamic and effective agent of positive change.

Whether or not I had the skills and dedication necessary for the job is for others to decide.  But in the last four years we have become a more dynamic and effective organization. We did organize a successful march across California’s central valley and we did lead the effort to pass proposition 25—the majority vote initiative.  But sustained positive change has proven to be very difficult given the previous governor and the state budget deficits.

We have helped elect a new governor and state officers. So there is still hope for positive change despite the terrible budget situation.

CFT benefits from its broad scope of membership, from pre school to the iuniversity, including teachesr, classified employees, paraprofessionals and other educational employees, and now Los Angeles city employees.

In short, CFT has a unique opportunity to provide educational leadership in the state and in the nation.

We have been learning to support one another, independent of what level of education we are involved in, or what our particular job titles are.

We have been obeying the old adage that an injury to one is an injury to all.

The CFT is fortunate to have a very strong staff. Will FRU employees please stand? Will OPEIU employees please stand?

I must recognize Margaret Shelleda. I do not know how CFT would run without Margaret.  She is the glue that holds us together. Thank you Margaret for all the support you gave me. We can only dream that when she retires in June that we will find someone as competent as she is to replace her.

I also thank Fred Glass and Steve Hopcraft for helping me to present CFT positions to the world.  Their help in crafting our message and then seeing that it actually gets published somewhere was vital to putting CFT in the public eye.

And also a special thank you to Ken Burt for his work in directing our election strategies and putting them into effect. He certainly is one of the best in the state at putting together a campaign program.

I believe that we, in the union movement, must be a major force in the creation of a civilized society and I have attempted to lead CFT in that direction.

We know that the lives of our members and our students do not begin and end at our work sites.  The critical issues that affect our society are the same now as they were four years ago—and sadly they haven’t improved much with the election of President Obama.  The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue; universal single payer health care is still a dream; poverty and the gap between the middle class and the very rich continues to grow; racism still is raising its ugly head as exemplified by the attacks on immigrants and the recent hearings on the perceived threat from Muslim Americans; the environment is still being destroyed at an ever increasing rate; the freedom to marry, independent of gender, is still not in effect in California; and even a woman’s right to choose is under attack.

All profoundly impact our members and their students. Unions are a crucial player for progressive policies and as a result, public sector unions are under attack.

The attack on public employee unions across the country is no more about fiscal responsibility or solving deficits than the invasion of Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction or the invasion of Afghanistan was about democracy and the rights of women.

We understand that the attack on public employees and their unions is an attack funded by billionaires and multi-national corporations that want unions out of the way so that nothing stands between them and their profits as they attempt to drive wages, benefits, and pensions down—in the public and the private sectors.

Their goals are to cut taxes for the wealthy, eliminate social security programs, privatize the public sector, deregulate the economy and bust unions.

Their interest is in promoting the “me.” Our interest is promoting the “we.”

We are not responsible for America’s and California’s deficit problem. We are not overpaid and we deserve the benefits and pensions that we bargained for.

There is plenty of money available without demanding concessions from public sector employees. The irony is that the bankers and Wall Street put us in this mess and then they got bailed out.

California is the state with the world's eighth largest economy, with a Gross National Product of $1.9 trillion; registered the highest economic output in the country in 2009; and twenty percent (80) of the United States' billionaires live in the state.  Moreover, the top one-percent of income earners have doubled their share of income over the past 20 years from 13 to 25 percent. The Legislature should be spending time on addressing how the wealth in California can be used for the common good instead of attacking public employees and their hard earned benefits.

And while the corporations continue to off-shore jobs in a drive to lower labor costs, we are portrayed as the villains.

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