First elected to the State Senate in 2014, Council 93 has a long-standing relationship with Senator Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow). We know who he is and what he stands for, and as a State Senator he has fought hard for AFSCME members. For example, Lesser has been the lead sponsor in the Senate of our line-of-duty death benefit legislation. This bill would provide a one-time payment of $300,000 to the beneficiaries of any public sector employee killed in the line of duty. Currently only public safety workers have that benefit, but we think it should be available to all public employees. Senator Lesser agrees, and although he was unsuccessful in adding this to the senate budget this year, he fought very hard for the amendment. He was also able to secure a commitment from Senate leadership to consider this as a separate bill in informal sessions.
In addition to Senator Lesser’s excellent work with us in the past and his pro-union positions, we also have another reason to support him. One of his opponents in this race is Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, and to be frank, we do not want to see her win this race. If her name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve have battled her on privatization for many years now. Most recently, she led the successful effort to privatize our school bus drivers in Salem – not so much for financial reasons but because her administration simply could not manage the city’s school transportation system. As a result of her admitted poor management skills, about 20 good union jobs were eliminated, the majority of which were held by women with an average of 15 years of service. Driscoll refused to even meet with us to discuss the privatization of these bus drivers.
Eric Lesser stands in sharp contrast to this approach, and we would like to see him win the Lieutenant Governor’s race. He has received endorsements from a variety of other unions, and in a recent communication said, “You Can’t Scare Me – I’m Sticking to the Union!” That’s our kind of guy. We respectfully urge our members to support Eric Lesser for Lieutenant Governor in the primary election on September 6, 2022. Click here to find out more.
