PEF Really Stands For The Professional Employee Fund

Professional Employee Federation President Ken Brynien's inflated $137,622 salary is precisely why rank and file members are routinely denied effective representation for blatant labor-management violations that PEF is bound by state and federal law to handle. The paltry budget allocated for member representation by PEF executive committee is severely restricted enabling PEF management to garner salaries far in excess of that with which they would be entitled if they reverted to their state titles. The Public Employees Relations Board, which is the state agency charged with oversight of state labor unions, is in bed with PEF, CSEA and other state bargaining units, often serving as a foil thwarting meritorious improper practice filings by aggreived workers with highly unethical procedural machinations, or by simply kicking the can down the road with absolutely no accountability. PERB has long had an incestuous relationship with PEF, which unfairly inhibits aggrieved members from mounting prompt, effective challenges to blatant "improper practice" allegations. That corrupt practice allows both the state as well as entrenched interests in these bargaining units such PEF to maintain control in perpetuity, quell dissent among rank and file members, while surreptitiously sustaining the status quo. The only ones benefiting are Brynien and Donohue and other ineffective union leaders who collect outrageous salaries riding the bowed backs of hardworking rank and file workers, who deserve much better. Despite pleading with Brynien to represent me in not one but two flagrant violations of Civil Service law, his Civil Service Enforcement Director, Thomas Centrino, had the unmitigated effrontery to pen a curt, disrepectful and utterly dismissive email writing, "we already told you we cannot help you..." Despite the fact that ensuring job security is the primary function of a union, and that is precisely what that grievance was regarding. It cost me 48 months in lost wages with which I still have not recovered. The latest grievance is one where my agency simply told me to take "sick leave," charge it to my accruals, and leave the building, which is an indisputable violation of our collective bargaining agreement with New York State. Brynien's response was to delete my email "without being read." His arrogance is only exceeded by his considerable girth, and though he could parade out any number of co-opted loyal Council Leaders, shop stewards, rank and file members, cronies and flunkies swearing that he is an effective advocate for state workers, nothing could be further from the truth. So, we will see Mr. Brynien in federal court (1:10-CV-00941-GLS-RFT NDNY) in short order. PEF executive management can explain to our membership why its bargaining unit is spending finite resources engaging in a legal battle with a bona fide member who has a legitimate grievance with his hiring unit instead of representing him. Maybe after they end that short conversation, we can begin an equally short one discussing de-certification, because PEF has become too unwieldy, too bureaucratic, and too compromised to be of any help to its membership, with corrupt leadership that has become sleek, well feed, complacent and, as such, a broken mirror of the very agency management against which it is supposed to effectively but only ineffectually represents us.