Scheming to steal workers' pensions

[Hannah Bell]

Amy Muldoon looks behind the hype about how public-sector workers get "exorbitant" pensions--and finds a cabal of right-wing politicians and CEOs out to bash unions.


A recent cover story in the investors' magazine Barron's by Jonathan Laing--headlined "The $2 Trillion Hole"--touts a recent Pew study which found that the shortfall between what's owed to public-sector workers for their pensions and the funds that have been set aside to pay them is now valued at up to $2 trillion. (The exact dollar amount of the gap is greatly disputed but lies somewhere between $1 and $3 billion).

Laing finds it outrageous that public employees usually retire with a guaranteed pension. His article, and similar one in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, consciously whip up anti-union and anti-public sector vitriol.

Of course, it's not surprising that the wealthy would bemoan decent compensation for working people. But their intention with the current hype is to generate a backlash from private-sector workers against their brothers and sisters in the public sector. This, they hope, will provide the political space for further attacking public-sector unions. Thus, in what must be a first for Barron's, Laing attempts to sympathize with working people stuck in 401(k) plans, in an attempt to turn them against those with fixed pensions...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/04/12/scheming-to-steal-pensions

[paulsby]

1. as a public employee myself, let me tell you

my retirement plan (pension) is pretty bitchen, but i max out my 403(b) as well. best o' both worlds.

the pension was part of the reason i chose my job, though

[Sherman A1]

2. I don't begrudge anyone their pensions or benefits

Well, except maybe a group of CEO's. Public & Private sector worker bees need pensions, just as much as those high flyin' Bosses.

I guess in their mind, once they are done with our productive working years, we should just go off into the woods and die quietly so that their taxes (that they don't pay anyway) don't go up.

[ejpoeta]

4. yeah how is that!! these big corporate folks seem to be doing just fine with their golden

parachutes.

[skeptical cynic]

3. I did 14 years as a public employee

And the pension was the only reason I put that time in. In my field of work, the private sector pays twice as much. The pension was the only attraction. There came a point when that wasn't enough anymore.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. The pension is part of the contract through collective bargaining.

Paying pensions is not optional after the work's been put in.

[hack89]

8. The problem is when politicians refuse to fund them adequately

and then come to the tax payer to bail them out. Your sentiment is the right one but there are some states that are so deep in the hole they will never be able to fund their promises without a taxpayer revolt.

[whistler162]

6. Here is the actual article... not a interpretation of what he wrote....

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB126843815871861303.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D3

And there is a problem that businesses and government have ignored.

IIRC... the company I work for, now about 45 employees, has something like 500 people within its defined benefits pension plan, after 100+ years in business and several mergers.

The company has kept on top of the problemn but is putting something like 1 million into the plan just this year. Other entities don't.

[quaker bill]

7. It is only "unfair"

because private sector benefits have been gutted to increase corporate profits. My grandfather did very well with his private sector pension and employee stock ownership program. Such benefits have all but been eliminated from private sector employment, with the busting of the union movement. The first semi-professional job I worked had one of these old fashioned union contracts, great benefits, a fairly certain path for career advancement, and a pension. It was gutted by Wall Street types in the 1980s. They have been repeating the same process across the economy for the last 30 years.

The benefits I now get as a public sector employee are quite weak by comparison to historic standards, but seem a bit generous by standards of the typical arrangement today. It is not that public sector benefits are all that great, it is that private sector benefits have all but ceased to exist.

[fasttense]

9. Pensioners have now become the new Welfare Queens.n/t

[warrior1]

10. The Sacramento Bee

has a constant assault on state workers. That's why it matters who the next governor of our state is. Go Jerry Brown.