# "we will inconvenience you"



## Guest (Nov 4, 2006)

*Union pickets despite cancellation*
By *Crystal Bozek*/ Daily News Staff
Friday, November 3, 2006

*M*ARLBOROUGH -- About 60 city employees came out last night to picket the site of a canceled Tim Murray for lieutenant governor fund-raiser that Mayor Nancy Stevens was set to host with one message for her -- "We will inconvenience you."
The boisterous group, made up mostly of police and department of public works crews, marched beside Coral Seafood for an hour and a half to protest what they say is mismanagement of the city's health insurance trust fund.
Local Democratic officials canceled last night's fund-raiser, when Worcester Mayor Murray refused to cross a picket line -- even an informational picket -- to attend his own private event.
"Although she may not like it, the unions want Mayor Nancy Stevens to know that we will protest her administration's anti-worker policies at times that she may find inconvenient," Marlborough Police Patrol Officers Association President Patrick Hogan said through a news release.
The city's collective bargaining units and several unions have come to an impasse in contract negotiations over past management of the city's health insurance trust fund, which racked up a $4 million deficit between 2000 and 2003.
City employees' health insurance premiums have risen 107 percent in the last five years. Unions blame the city for increasing the premiums in order to partially cover the $4 million deficit, which they call unfair and possibly illegal.
The unions have staged informational pickets twice before in front of City Hall.
This time they did it without the help of the teachers union, which decided against picketing an event of a candidate their statewide counterpart -- Massachusetts Teachers Association -- endorsed.
Stevens requested mediation for contract negotiations with all unions except the fire union, earlier this week.
Union representatives said their picket did not encourage non-participation in Murray's fund-raiser. They were only looking to use a little of his spotlight to make more people aware of their issue, they said.
"The picket would serve no detriment to the candidacy of Tim Murray because it targets Mayor Stevens," the union news release states.


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