Victoria Lightcap, running for County Legislator 12th District

1. A Project labor agreement is a comprehensive pre-hire collective bargaining agreement that establishes standardized conditions and wages for all contractors and subcontractors on a PLA covered project. PLAs offer:

Stable labor costs so you can bid without guessing.
Reliable supply of local skilled workers for the project duration.
Apprenticeship trained and certified workers.
A no-strike, no lockout commitment.
Binding procedures to settle disputes, so no work stoppages.
Management flexibility to meet special project needs.

Do you support Project Labor Agreements? If not, explain why.

ANSWER: Yes I support PLA's, they are an example of how government can work together with businesses to improve the working environment locally by providing for living wages and skilled local workers on construction projects. In order to move Onondaga County forward
economically we need to continue to develop other examples of
constructive collaboration between labor, businesses and government, such as PLA's. Strengthening the economy with agreements that support living wages and standardized working conditions will create a stable job force of workers, providing them with an opportunity to make Onondaga County their life long home.

2. Private school vouchers and other schemes like education tax credits for K-12 private school expenses undermine public education by taking scarce public funds away from public schools that are open to the public and shifting them to private schools.
The AFL-CIO strongly supports legislation that would strengthen public education by helping states and local school districts reduce their class sizes and finance school repair, construction, and modernization projects with protection for prevailing community wages. A growing number of public schools all across the country are being forced to set up classrooms in trailers, hallways, and closets in order to accommodate their rapidly rising enrollments. One-third of all public schools also need extensive repair or replacement.

What is your view of proposals to provide for private school vouchers and/or charter schools?

ANSWER: I do not support funding of private charter schools and private school vouchers where such funding deplete public funds from public schools. Instead, I favor community based involvment by families, students, teachers and businesses in indentifying problems and creating solutions. Active research and investigation into public and private funding for the public schools in our County is imperative. I support AFL-CIO legislative initiatives that would support public education and the improvement of educational facilities. As a member of the Fayetteville-Manlius Advisory Committee for the gifted and talented programs, a mother of two public school students, and a daughter of a learning disabilities teacher, education is an extremely high priority of mine. As a County Legislator, I will work hard to promote quality public education for all our children.

What would you do to improve the state of disrepair many of our public schools are currently experiencing?

ANSWER: I would support improvement of school facilities with public and private funds. Our youth are the foundation of our future, their success depends on continued efforts to provide equal and adequate physical foundations of facilities, educational technologies, and human resources. In providing for facility improvements the focus should be on construction contracts that support living wages, moderniziation that achieves the highest standards of quality and energy efficiency.

3. Ninety-four percent of workers say firing an employee for supporting union representation is an “unacceptable action” and 80 percent say they are aware that such actions are against the law. Nevertheless, employers illegally fire union supports in 31 percent of organizing campaigns and many use other tactics to thwart workers’ efforts to form unions.
A recent report by Human Rights Watch shows that existing laws are too lax and unenforced to prevent employer attacks on workers’ rights. For instance, while employers can prevent unions from contacting workers at their work places to discuss the advantages of union membership, they are free to deluge workers with anti-union messages.

Do you believe employers should be held accountable for their anti-union activities?

ANSWER: Employers should be held accountable for anti-union activities through enforcement existing provisions and laws, increasing penalties for in appropriate resatrictions on organizing activities and by creating an effective oversight committee comprised of labor union members, workers and business leaders to monitor, mediate and address workers rights to organize. Public contracts and publically funded projects with contractors and vendors can be more specifically tailored to provide provisions that ensure workers rights to organize. A business which refuses to recognize the rights of workers to organize can be precluded from participation in local publically funded projects.

If yes, what actions should be taken against companies that violate workers’ rights to organize?

ANSWER: see up

How could labor laws be improved to guarantee workers’ right to organize?

ANSWER: see up

4. While the economy has been growing, this growth has been accompanied by a sluggish job market that seems to provide too few with a rising standard of living or greater economic security. Economists have attributed this unique predicament to several factors, including corporate downsizing, global competition, the introduction of labor saving technologies, and a pattern of increasingly large rewards to more highly skilled employees. Indeed, a recent study found that most Americans today are worse off than they were before the 1989-1991 recession.
Many northeast communities have lured businesses or encouraged them to stay through tax incentives. However, these incentives have not prevented those companies from downsizing the jobs of those very same taxpayers who offered the tax breaks in the first place.

Should companies be able to accept such tax breaks only to downsize thereafter?

ANSWER: No. All businesses that seek these tax advantages must be held to highly scrutinized standards of accountablity.

How would you correct this apparent inequity?

ANSWER: There should be penalties and claw back provisions attached with these tax advantages for those businesses who do not maintain the high standards of accountablity.

5. An honest day’s work should be rewarded with an honest day’s pay. That’s what a “Living Wage” is all about. Living wage ordinances have been enacted in 80 localities across the nation and have been passed in Rochester, Buffalo and New York City.
A living wage ordinance requires employers to pay wages that are above federal or state minimum wage levels. Only a specific set of workers are covered by living wage ordinances, usually those employed by businesses that have a contract with a city or county government or those who receive economic development subsidies from the locality. The rationale behind the ordinances is that city and county governments should not contract with or subsidize employers who pay poverty-level wages.
The living wage level is usually the wage a full-time worker would need to earn to support a family above the federal poverty line, ranging from 100% to 130% of the poverty measurement. The wage rates specified by living wage ordinances range from a low of $6.25 in Milwaukee to a high of $10.75 in San Jose ( A wage of $8.96 an hour with health benefits is recommended for Syracuse, NY.).
Living wage ordinances provide much needed raises for low-income workers. Wages for the bottom 10% of wage earners fell by 9.3% between 1979 and 1999. The number of jobs where wages were below what a worker would need to support a family of four above the poverty line also grew between 1979 and 1999. In 1999, 26.8% of the workforce earned poverty-level wages, an increase from 23.7% in 1979.

Can you provide a good reason why you would not support legislation that requires a living wage for workers? Please include your position on a living wage for Syracuse-area workers.

ANSWER: I strongly support legislation that requires a living wage for workers. The goals of the living wage legislation will improve the economy of Onondaga County by promoting productivity, and work place stability, it will increase consumer income, decrease poverty and it will invigorate the Central New York community and reduce the needs for tax payer services and programs. I support these goals and the legislation for a living wage. As a working mother of two I recognize how difficult it is for families to provide for their families. Families are faced with real problems of shrinking health care benefits, low wages which often forces families to work 2 or more low paying minimum wage jobs which causes real and significant difficulties for raising and caring for children and the family. I support real initiatives and legislation that will improve life for working families.

6. “Down-waging” has become a standard practice by highly profitable companies who replace full-time workers with part-timers, temps or sub-contract out for lower wages and poorer benefits. Between 1980 and 1995, 42-million jobs were lost in the United States. Each year, there are 50 percent more people laid off than are victims of crime, which raises the question of which is the greater social ill.
Reduced wages and benefits negatively impacts on families’ ability to afford adequate health care. Forty-three million Americans do not have health insurance and another million lose it each month.

And, while many parents believe college costs will be the biggest expense they face for their children, in fact many will spend more in a year on quality child care than on public college tuition, according to a new Children's Defense Fund (CDF) report.

The AFL-CIO supports guaranteed high-quality child-care, health care, job education and training.

What steps can elected officials take to ensure that these benefits are available to all Americans?

ANSWER: I support the AFL-CIO initiatives and legislation for guarenteed high quality child care, health care and job education and re-training. Unionizing child care workers providing them with benefits will improve the quality of child care and provide reliable standardized care with in the industry. Health care is a priority for our national and local officials which I am committed to promoting.

7. Those who advocate the privatization of government services seek a significant reduction in the government’s role in society. But, market-oriented policies cannot be relied on, by themselves, to meet our citizens needs.
Studies conducted by Cornell University found that the claims by privatization ideologues, are “quite groundless” and the empirical research supporting such claims are “so flawed as to be useless as a policy guide.”
Instead, privatization of government services has been shown to
•diminish the access to public services
•reduce employee morale, productivity and turnover
•exploit part-time workers through low wages and benefits
•increase discrimination against minorities
•cause the loss of government sovereignty
•weakens constitutional rights (e.g., whistle blowing, ethical conduct)
•reduce quality of services
•increase corruption, bribery and kick-backs
•lose accountability for public values and services.

Do you support privatizing public services? Please explain your answer.

ANSWER: No. Principles of equity and justice require that services essential to the public should be maintained by the Public.

8. As an elected official, how would you ensure that the voice of labor and community-based agencies are recognized on decision-making bodies such as the Industrial Development Authority?

ANSWER: IDA's should be a cross section of all aspects of our community not the least of which is the labor based and community based organizations and committee's. In order to ensure that projects pursuant to IDA's are in the interest of the many and not the few all issues and proposals should be reported to the community before implementation. The community deserves fundamental protection and benefits contained in the language of agreements and projects such as living wage and benefit protections, if developers are going to seek benefits and tax incentives through projects aimed at community improvement and development under IDA projects and plans. Public forums should be held for the discussion of proposals and labor and other community based agencies should be provided with an opportunity to provide position papers and research for consideration and disimination to the public. I will work as an advocate for the labor and community based agencies to ensure the promotion of development that is socially, environmentally and financially responsible, focused on the concerns of the Community as a whole.

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Greater Syracuse Labor Council Questionnaire