Published Date: 2020-05-29

(Insert date)

Senator/Assembly Member (Insert name)

California State Capitol

Room (Insert room)

Sacramento, CA 95814

RE: State Worker Compensation Reduction

Dear Senator/Assembly Member (NAME),

My name is (insert name). I am a state-employed Psychiatric Technician at (name of facility), and I belong to Bargaining Unit 18, represented by the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians. We work in state prisons, hospitals, and developmental centers.  I am writing/contacting you today as a member of an essential healthcare workforce that has been classified as critical to the state’s operations and made exempt from the Families First Corona Virus Response Act.

On May 14, Governor Newsom proposed budgetary revisions that included reducing state worker compensation by ten percent through the collective bargaining process. My union met with state representatives to negotiate how best to achieve this reduction with a minimal economic impact to BU 18 employees. The state’s solution involved a furlough-type program of two days per month, which, taken alone, meets the ten percent reduction in compensation. Unfortunately, the state also plans to freeze our wages at their June 2020 levels until further notice. The furloughs and the lost wages that were bargained in good faith amount to a 15 percent annual pay cut.

While I am willing to do my share to be part of the solution, I must respectfully ask that our contract and all of its provisions, economic and otherwise, bargained in good faith, be honored. I cannot economically afford lost wages on top of the two furloughed days each month.

Psych Techs cannot “shelter at home” during this unprecedented pandemic. Our CAPT brothers and sisters go to work each day bearing upon their shoulders the genuine risk of contracting COVID-19 at work and possibly infecting their loved ones at home.

Along with my CAPT brothers and sisters, I ask to be treated as the essential workers the state espouses to honor. It is time for the state to honor us with its actions and not with empty words. It is time for the state to treat us as humans, as professionals, and as the essential workers we have always been, deserving of respect and dignity.

Respectfully submitted,

(Your name and contact)

 

May 29, 2020 | Download Letter