Mike's letter is also linked here at our website's Press Releases page, so it can be accessed online after it's archived at the Courant's website.

In his response, Mike points to the fact that members of Chapters I14 and I15, which represent East Hartford’s public service workers, recently ratified a cost-savings agreement with the Town. Kniep's failure to acknowledge their sacrifice is particularly offensive, considering the fact that eight workers were laid-off in January as the Town's economic outlook worsened.

Mike also challenges Kniep's often-repeated, and completely false, claim that Connecticut's binding arbitration laws benefit unions at the expense of taxpayers. In fact, the Courant published an Op-Ed she submitted just two weeks ago in which she regurgitated many of the same lies she and her so-called "taxpayers organization" have repeated over the years in order to turn the public against public workers.

Since Connecticut's economy began to nosedive last fall, Susan Kniep and her fellow mouthpieces for corporations and big businesses have been given a forum for their distracting, divisive rhetoric. Our best defense is to respond to their false charges with the truth...

When your local paper publishes commentaries written by or includes quotes from anti-public service radicals, write a letter in response and share with readers your own experience being part of the solution in your community.

Then visit Common Cause's Letters to the Editor webpage for the contact info for your community's newspaper, and send them your statement.

Then contact me here at the union hall at (800) 894-9479, ext. 129, to let me know when your letter is printed, so we can post it online and share it with the rest of our Union's members.