Penn Live: Billionaires try to buy off Pennsylvania, but AFSCME is fighting back
Billionaire-funded special interest groups are once again taking to the Penn Live opinion section to attack public employees and their unions.
Meanwhile, AFSCME Council 13 is on the rebound as members and staff have undergone a transparent process over the last year to restructure our union to be more efficient both in terms of cost and delivery of service to members.
Council 13 is growing. That growth is happening despite the attempts of organizations like “Commonwealth Foundation” and “Americans for Fair Treatment” to attack us in op-eds and target AFSCME members with misinformation campaigns to deceive them into giving up their union membership.
These groups are bankrolled by the same billionaire-funded machine that brought the Janus v. AFSCME case and have spent years trying to strip workers of their freedom to organize and bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions.
This web of dark money has been spewing the same propaganda for years because they know labor unions stand in the way of the total exploitation – and elimination – of the public service workers who keep Pennsylvania thriving. That’s their real agenda and it always has been.
This same network is tied to Project 2025, which laid out the blueprints for the ongoing gutting of federal agencies that is costing Americans’ jobs, as well as endangering public health and safety.
On top of that, billionaire-owned politicians in Congress just proposed a budget that would be devastating to working class Pennsylvanians. They want to slash as much as $880 billion in federal Medicaid spending, which keeps the doors open at hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and veterans’ homes, especially in rural areas.
In Pennsylvania, more than 3 million people rely on Medicaid. That’s one in six adults, three in eight children, and five in eight nursing home residents. 34 percent of births in this state are covered by Medicaid. The federal government pays 55 percent of the commonwealth’s cost of traditional Medicaid and 90 percent of the cost of the Medicaid expansion. Medicaid cuts would be devastating for Pennsylvanians.
These attacks on public services, the workers who provide them, and their unions, are a direct attack on our state and all working people.
But our detractors are right about one thing; unions like ours “remain a prominent force,” a prominent force for worker rights, strong public services, and a voice for the working class.
We’re AFSCME Strong, and we’re not going anywhere.
Via Penn Live: https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2025/03/billionaires-try-to-buy-off-pennsylvania-but-afscme-is-fighting-back-opinion.html