RALEIGH -- For 15 minutes during Monday's lunch hour, about 200 people pointed protest signs toward the Legislative Building and let their silence do the talking.
The state AFL-CIO organized the silent protest to draw attention to proposed changes to the state's health care plan, the workers' compensation system and other issues important to public sector workers.
Protesters held signs aloft reading, "I am a citizen" and "Collective bargaining for all," the quiet broken only by passing traffic, the rustling of tree branches in the wind and the occasional bark of one protester's dog.
Afterward, protesters clapped, roared and chanted, "We are one!"
The noon event, on the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., was a quiet insistence that union rights be protected. King was gunned down in Memphis, Tenn., as he was visiting to support sanitation workers seeking collective bargaining power.
In North Carolina, lawmakers have approved a bill that would require teachers and state employees to pay individual health care premiums for the first time, a significant change for the 663,000 members of the State Health Plan. The bill aims to keep the health plan solvent through 2013 by closing an expected $515 million gap between revenues and medical claims.
Government workers in North Carolina have no collective bargaining rights under state law, but the partisan fight over benefits is playing out amid the backdrop of a national struggle between public-sector labor and conservative lawmakers. In states such as Wisconsin and Ohio, conservative lawmakers have sought to curtail or revoke collective bargaining rights as a way to trim state budgets.
Collective bargaining means a lot to Michael Holtz of Havelock, who came to Raleigh on his day off to take part in the protest. A letter carrier in New Bern, Holtz said he has long enjoyed the benefits of union representation.
"Our union has worked well," Holtz said of the National Association of Letter Carriers, for which he has served as a union steward. "It's one of the best things to ever happen to me."
A letter carrier for nearly three decades, Holtz credits his postal union for his good salary and steady benefits.
"There's a middle class because of collective bargaining," he said. "We take that away, it will be big business and poor people."
The AFL-CIO has identified workers' compensation, health care reform, a voter ID bill and other issues as key in the current legislative session. The workers' comp issue could prove particularly divisive. At the rally Monday, AFL-CIO officials and others said they're bracing for the anticipated filing of a bill that would restrict workers' compensation benefits.
That bill doesn't sit well with Steve Howell, a UPS driver from Lumberton. Howell attended the rally in support of the existing workers' compensation system. For workers in physically demanding jobs, restrictions to the current workers' comp system could be dire, he said.
"I get paid good money," Howell said. "But if I got hurt on the job and they reduce workers' comp, it will really hurt me and my family."
