LVCEA PRIVATIZATION ALERT

The LVCEA has been negotiating with the City on verbiage for guidelines for the City to follow on the outsourcing or privatizing of any Classified Jobs. On April 23, 2002, the LVCEA Membership voted to approve a MOU on Privatization to our Contract for that purpose. The City, for the last couple of years, has been outsourcing all custodial services for offsite work sites. This has been done through attrition, by not replacing all Custodial positions that have become vacant. Best Janitorial has had the City Contract since 2000 and the City continues to use this contractor for all offsite work sites. If you are an employee from one of these work sites, please contact us with any information that we may need to prove to the City that they are not getting the best service for the cost. We can only fight this by having the assistance of all of the membership.

Employees can help prevent privatization by taking these five positive steps, starting right now:

1. Build your union's capacity to fight privatization.
2. Watch out for the warning signs.
3. Set conditions and standards that "raise the bar" for private companies that provide public services.
4. Make sure taxpayers are satisfied with the services they are receiving.
5. Educate decision-makers, the media and the community about the problems of privatization.

In fact, our real job is education. And LVCEA members are the ones who must do it. There are plenty of advocates for privatization working overtime to get their point of view out. Help us with this fight by the following:

1. Volunteer for the Privatization Committee.
2. Provide information to the Association to approach management before privatization happens.
3. Provide information to the Association about the contractors who don't live up to their contracts.
4. Work hard and provide the best service possible to the taxpayers to prevent your job from being privatized.
5. Educate the public about public officials that wish to reorganize or restructure government by privatizing jobs.

The LVCEA is only as good as our Memberships involvement. Please help us fight and prevent anymore privatization! If you have information you feel is important and or would like to volunteer for the privatization Committee, contact The LVCEA Office (702) 649-6606.