Anders Lindall, AFSCME Council 31’s public affairs director, and Clyde Weiss, AFSCME assistant editor, send us this report.  

The rights of public service workers seem to be of no consequence to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D). He’s prepared to sign a bill that allows him to deny collective bargaining rights to 3,580 state employees of his choosing, including up to 1,900 who currently have union representation. The legislation also allows the state’s other constitutional officers broad latitude to take away bargaining rights from their employees.

Temo Fuentes is one of the public employees Mitt Romney says we have "too many" of and that “it’s time for us to cut back." Fuentes repairs the fire trucks that would be on the scene immediately if Romney’s exclusive $12 million oceanfront La Jolla, Calif., mansion—or any other in the posh neighborhood—caught fire.

In this third AFSCME video spotlighting the public service workers and the 47% Romney says he doesn’t care about, Fuentes—whose mother once cleaned houses in Romney’s upscale enclave—worries about how he will provide for his family if his job disappears.

If Mitt Romney has his way, even more public service workers will be out of jobs because he says, “It’s time for us to cut back” on police officers, teachers, social workers and sanitation workers like San Diego County’s Joan Raymond, who says, “I actually did pick up trash on Mitt Romney’s street.”

This second video from AFSCME features a worker whose job it is to keep exclusive neighborhoods pristine, including Romney’s in La Jolla, Calif., where his $12 million mansion is perched on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean.

Raymond says:

In this cross-post from “In These Times,” photojournalist and author David Bacon says immigrant workers and public service workers have a lot in common this May Day.  

One sign carried in almost every May Day march of the last few years says it all: “We are Workers, not Criminals!” Often it was held in the calloused hands of men and women who looked as though they’d just come from work in a factory, cleaning an office building, or picking grapes.