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State workers union protests Bee's salary database
By Andy Furillo - afurillo@sacbee.com
Published 6:50 pm PDT Wednesday, March 12, 2008
State employees picket The Sacramento Bee newspaper Wednesday, objecting to the online publication of a searchable salary database. Michael Allen Jones / mjones@sacbee.com
About 100 angry, purple-shirted members of California's largest state workers union staged a sidewalk protest against The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday for posting a searchable database of state employees' salaries on the newspaper's Web site.
Shouting slogans and carrying placards, the members of the 80,000-strong Service Employees International Union Local 1000 blasted The Bee for violating what they believed were their personal privacy rights. Union leaders presented Bee managers with petitions with an estimated 3,000 signatures demanding that the paper take down its database containing the salaries.
Union President Jim Hard told the crowd outside The Bee's midtown office that he was "disgusted" by what he described as the paper's "crass commercialism" and "callous disregard" for his members' safety.
"Our union is completely in favor of public access to information regarding the use of their tax money, the pay scales, the classifications, the number of state employees and comparisons in any reasonable fashion to counties, cities and the public sector," Hard said. "But to post my name up there, I'd like The Bee to explain how that helps any public policy of public finance discussion or issue."
Hard and two other SEIU 1000 representatives presented the petitions to the paper and met privately for about 15 minutes with Bee executives. Hard told the protesters later that the Bee representatives were "cordial, polite, and ... unresponsive to the issue of privacy for state workers."
In a statement, Bee Executive Editor Melanie Sill said the paper has heard from "hundreds" of workers in protest and that while it respects their views, "our original reasons for posting the database still hold."
"We believe that all information on government spending is of public interest, particularly at a time when our state faces a widening budget crisis," Sill said.
About the writer:
- Call Andy Furillo, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 321-1141.
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