'Oh Susana' Sings a Different Tune

CWA launched a new website this week that continues to expose Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's record of favoring out-of-state corporations at the expense of New Mexico working families and homegrown small businesses.

The revamped www.OhSusana.org will now be a clearinghouse for progressives to get information about Martinez and join campaigns against her destructive pro-corporation, anti-worker agenda.

Just as Martinez is getting more and more vice presidential buzz, CWA released a new background memo Tuesday that calls into question her national appeal.

And CWA, which represents 4,000 public sector workers in the state, is also using the new online platform to build awareness around the governor's decision not to fill thousands of vacant jobs for nurses, educators, social workers, environmental scientists and cultural affairs employees. Public employee vacancies are as high as 30 percent in some sectors, said Miles Conway, who heads CWA's NM legislative-political action team.

"Any chance the governor gets a change to run her government more like a Walmart, she does," said Conway.

State employees have already been forced to take furlough days, pay cuts and heavier workloads with little say in the bargaining process. Now she's seeking to further strip workers' rights and voices through negotiations

"It really rolls the contract back to the age of political patronage in the civil service," said CWA Legislative Director Shane Larson. "She really wants to politicize whole state's workforce."

The website has already had some success in mobilization. When it first debuted earlier this year — focusing on the state's Corporate Tax Fairness Bill — it collected 5,000 signatures calling on Martinez to sign the bipartisan legislation requiring multi-state big box companies doing business in New Mexico to pay their fair share of taxes. Ignoring the coalition of small businesses, union members and civil rights leaders who worked hard for passage of the legislation, Martinez vetoed the bill.