i work for sciu ten to one. i represent health care workers here in the city and county of san francisco. i will keep my comments really short because some people have already made some of the remarks i was going to make and they have done it in a very eloquent way. i just want to say thank you very much to supervisor campos for introducing this legislation. and thank you also to supervisors cohen, mar, avalos, kim and mirkarimi for co-sponsoring it. and i just wanted to give you one -- i was originally going to speak about the consumer aspect but supervisor campos already did that quite eloquently. so i would like to just give one short example from my own life, that gives an example of why the time period is important. when i first came back to the bay area, my much beloved bay area from hawaii, i was on cobra for a while and i had an incident with the dog where i tried to break up a dog fight and it is up at the emergency room. for three hours in the emergency room because that was not a negotiated health car

she has been active in sciu since it only had four digits in its number. it was a great pleasure. i want to get out of the way so that she can call karen to the microphone and take her picture. >> not yet. any comments for the board? yes, no? yes, no? >> i have one comment. i would like to add to this. karen bishop is so well respected in the district. those of us on the other side of the bargaining table, i can speak for all of us that she represented her members very well. she is a very, very fine person and we wish her the best. [applause] >> i wanted to thank you for all of your years of service. you have been an amazing public servant. i remember being deathly afraid of view. i think that is what you wanted, which is great. i know what a softy you are, too. that is why your members love you. you will be deeply missed. you will be telling her from your home in retirement what she needs to do and what she should not do. if there are no further comments, let's do a roll call, please. >> yes. commissioner fewer: yes. commissioner maufas: yes. commissioner murase: yes. commissione

we are still working with sciu to get agreement. we still have some things under dialogue.hey want me to figure out a problem that they have that has nothing to do with pensions. we believe we have figured it out and we will be speaking with them the next two weeks to get an agreement. i think our hard work and resulted in a lot of confidence with the unions. the unions themselves are strong in this proposal. i have to thank them, time and again. i saw leadership coming out of a union to say we will not allow the city to be forced to consider pension reform without us. i thank them for that because this is the way that i used to do business in the city, doing business with the people involved. if you work with people, -- it has been my management style for 20 years -- he will get more out of those people that if you just forced them to do work that you know they have a problem with even as we approach muni, at this time of mayor, we are going to talk to the drivers and breed cried into what they do every day, even though we have to get more from them in terms of performance

. >> you talked about sciu as the union that you had to work with. the pension is going to change their life. >> we did meet with retirees. they told us they're concerned is not their pension, it is health care. they have some plans that they believe are very good for them and their age already. our changes on the retirement services board have to do with economics. if there is a choice between the purchase of generic drugs versus brand name drugs, that decision has come before the health services board. in my opinion, there is no difference between generic and brand name, except cost. so why don't we make a decision that saved us money without compromising quality? that is the kind of decision on what the health service's board to make. in by generic drugs -- invite generic drugs in. if we do not take quality away, we need to let you know, we are just lowering the cost. they are a little bit afraid of that, but i think they are more afraid of change which does not affect that quality of the health care they want. i think the additional person that w

francisco building, trades council, the medical society, the labor council, sci you tend to one, as sciu, unite your local to come a women's community clinic, young workers united, and the building construction trades council. that tells you the broad coalition that is behind this effort. i want to make two points in response to a couple of the things that have been said. it is easy to say this is going to cost thousands of jobs. it is the same parade of horrible things we heard when the ordinance was first introduced. facts have to speak for themselves. the one independent study on the health care security ordinance that was done not by anyone here in the city made it clear that the impact on jobs was not what was expected. there was no job loss because of the ordinance. those people have looked at that amendment and reached the same conclusion. our economist has made it clear the impact on job growth is minimal and in fact, once this law is implemented, you will continue to have thousands of jobs created in san francisco in the next few years. the last thing i would say is that i do be

some proud sons and daughters of michigan representing working people here and across the country, c sciury, teamster president jimmy hoffa, u.a.w. president bob king. utility workers president mike langford. we're proud of them and we're proud of your congressional delegation who are working every single day with your state and local elected officials. to create jobs and economic growth and prosperity here in michigan and all across the country. i am honored, we are honored to spend this day with you and your families. >> thank you! >> the working men -- >> thank you! >> and women of america. this day belongs to you. you deserve a little r&r. a little barbecue. because you've been working hard. you've been working hard to make ends meet. you've been working hard to build a better life for your kids. you've been working hard to build a better detroit. but that's not all i'm going to talk to you about. i also want to talk about the work you've been doing for decades. work to make sure the folks get an honest day's pay for an honest day's work. work to make sure families get a fair shake. t

sciu president mary kay henry. teamster president jimmy hoffa.sident mike langford. we are proud of them and we're proud of your congressional delegation who are working every single day with your state and local elected officials to create jobs and economic growth and prosperity here in michigan and all across the country. i am honored. we are honored to spend this day with you and your families. the working men and women of america. this day belongs to you. you deserve a little r and r. a little barbecue. a little grilling. because you've been working hard. you've been working hard to make ends meet. you've been working hard to build a better life for your kids. you've been working hard to build a better detroit. but that's not all i'm going to talk to you about. i also want to talk about the work you've been doing for decades. work to make sure the folks get an honest day's pay forrance honest day's work. work to make sure that families get a fair shake. the work you've done that helped build the greatest middle class that the world has ever k

you have andy stern, the former president of sciu, former long-time supporter, members of the jobs panel and also the bowles-simpson commission, and he challenged the president already, writing in "new york times" he's erred on the side of trying to reason with unreasonable people which seems to be the wrong strategy. there is not a clear understanding in most people's minds of what is his philosophy. in republicans there is a clear understanding. what do you say to that? >> i would say to andy and the american people and congress, who will be there tonight, listen to what the president has to say tonight, because the president will tell the american people and he will tell congress i'm going to send you the american jobs act. it is my idea, it is my set of ideas, my plans, for how we can make sure that american people are working, creating and saving jobs, doing that in places where there are needs, whether it's rebuilding our roads and bridges, keeping teachers in front of our children in classrooms, thinking about the rest of our infrastructure, also finding ways to encourage and ince

for their work and other colleagues in the labor movement including mary kate henry, president of sciu, i was thinking about the idea of intolerance and violence and with the civil rights movement and the themes of peace and violence and nonviolence and the choices that we all make as activists today and those around the country who share in all of our collective struggles. and i want to talk about it in this way, um, and that is that i think what we're seeing is a playing out of intolerance and violence that we have seen many times before, and we all have choices to make about how we will stand up to that or speak to it. and really i would talk about it, um, first in the sense of physical violence. um, and as you mentioned with the hate crimes and particularly against latinos in this country on the rise which, i think, is not a coincidence given the demographics and the reaction against growing latino population, what we see with violence and intolerance is when any group of people or groups of people take a step forward, there are people who are threatened by that. and i was pleased