Rush to Weaken Illinois’ Pension System Unwise
by Clyde Weiss | January 04, 2013
If Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn was serious about making the state’s pension system sustainable, he would back off his push to get the Legislature to pass something before this month’s lame-duck session ends. But, unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
As The New York Times reported this week, “The showdown is certain to ignite regional tensions over the way the pensions of public schoolteachers outside of Chicago are paid for, and could run up against legal barriers with a state Constitution that limits how pensions can be changed in the first place.”
Quinn's proposal would change the way the annual cost-of-living adjustment is calculated, drastically reducing pension values over time.
Thousands of active and retired public service workers, including members of AFSCME Council 31, are demonstrating their opposition to this assault on retirement security during two “Action Days” at the state Capitol, yesterday and today.
AFSCME, which is also a leading member of the National Public Pension Coalition, has long maintained that undermining public pension systems to fix a state’s economic troubles is not only unnecessary, but misses the target. It’s not pensions that caused those troubles in the first place, but a lack of revenues – especially from corporations that take advantage of tax loopholes, and the wealthy who have not paid their fair share of taxes. Read more about the myths of public employee pensions here.
Let’s look at just a few facts, from the We Are One Illinois coalition, of which AFSCME Council 31 is a member.
- For decades, Illinois politicians shorted or skipped the employer contributions required by law, creating the nation’s largest pension debt. All that time, public employees paid their fair share. It’s wrong to punish public employees for the actions – or inaction – of irresponsible politicians.
- A public employee’s pension is his or her own life savings – they typically contribute 8 percent, 9 percent or more from each paycheck to their pension fund. Illinois public employees have always paid their share, faithfully and in full.
- Most Illinois public employees are ineligible for Social Security. Unlike every private-sector worker in America, police and firefighters, teachers and university employees, city of Chicago and Cook County employees don’t qualify for Social Security. Reducing the pension they earn would leave many public employees with little to fall back on in retirement.
- Illinois public employees retire on very modest pensions—on average just $32,000 a year after a career dedicated to public service. Many receive much less than this average amount.
- The Illinois Constitution states that membership in a public pension system is an enforceable contractual relationship, “the benefits of which may not be diminished or impaired.” Legislation violating this constitutional protection will cause a costly and wasteful court challenge.
Henry Bayer, AFSCME Council 31’s executive director and an AFSCME International vice president, told The New York Times, “There’s no reason to rush into this, and on the contrary, you want to be deliberate.” That’s the right course for something as serious as the retirement security of dedicated public service workers, including firefighters and police, teachers and nurses, child protection workers and disability caregivers.
AFSCME and the We Are One Illinois coalition have evaluated an alternative pension reform plan by a bipartisan group of state legislators and found that, by gutting the cost of living adjustment provision that protects retirees from rising costs, it would cut workers’ already modest pensions by nearly a third.
Instead, the coalition offered its own framework for a fair and constitutional solution to the pension funding problem. It would provide an ironclad guarantee that state government could not skip its pension payments in the future; close wasteful corporate tax loopholes worth $2 billion a year, enabling politicians to stop using the retirement funds as a credit card; and offer that if the first two conditions are met, active employees could contribute an additional 2 percentage points of their salary to help close the shortfall.
We Are One Illinois has called for a mid-January summit meeting between labor and legislators to discuss the coalition’s framework. We suggest that the governor and lawmakers back off their schemes now and accept labor’s offer to engage in a deliberative process that solves the pension funding problem fairly.
Congress Passes Tax Cuts for Middle Class
by Gregory King | January 03, 2013
Compromise legislation Congress passed on New Year’s Day will make tax cuts for the middle class permanent, continue unemployment assistance for the long-term unemployed, extend critical tax credits for working families, and delay for two months the massive across-the-board spending cuts – known as sequestration – in military and domestic programs.
The bipartisan agreement will bring in $620 billion in new revenues, while offering an economic lifeline to the vast majority of working and unemployed Americans and their families.
The compromise wasn’t perfect. Additional new revenue could have been raised had Clinton-era tax rates returned for everyone making more than $250,000. And, as AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders notes, the compromise “sets the stage for major battles over spending cuts in the months ahead.”
Looming in the next two months is the need to extend the federal debt ceiling which tea party Republicans have pledged to use as a new opportunity to extract further cuts in spending.
Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are still at grave risk.
“In the weeks ahead, we must remain vigilant,” Saunders says. “Republican leaders in Congress have vowed to continue their demands for deep, drastic cuts to vital services that protect our communities – including funds for public schools, public safety, transportation, scientific research and college loans. They have made it clear that cuts in programs for veterans, seniors, students and low-income citizens will all be on the table. We must do everything in our power to protect these lifeline services.”
There are alternatives to unnecessary, reckless cuts. Billions of dollars can be saved, for example, through reforms that would not directly affect benefits and programs that Americans rely upon. Allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices is one example. Special interest tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy and corporations need to be eliminated before the earned benefits of seniors on Social Security and Medicare are cut. AFSCME also supports a close review of the bloated Defense Department budget.
“Moving forward we will intensify our efforts to engage our leaders and activists in these battles,” Saunders says. “We will continue to press Congress and President Obama to focus on job creation, which is the best way to stimulate our economy.”
Maryland Council 3 Holds Founding Convention
by Joye Barksdale | December 21, 2012
A new page in AFSCME history has been written: the union’s newest council is Maryland Council 3, which held its founding convention Dec. 14-15 in Columbia, Md.
More than 150 delegates attended, representing more than 24,000 state and university, and private sector, employees. They ratified their first constitution and elected a slate of officers – including Pres. Patrick Moran (Local 770), Sec.-Treas. Flo Jones (Local 112), Executive Vice Pres. 2 Mo Said (Local 539), Executive Vice Pres. 3 Lisa Henson (Local 1427) and Executive Vice Pres. 4 Ron Lohr (Local 898). Delegates also elected region board members, unit board members and trustees.
Council 3 represents state government workers from more than a dozen departments and agencies and university campuses.
Aside from handling official business, the delegates also heard from Pres. Lee Saunders. Council 3 is the reconstituted Council 982, which went into “Organizing Committee Status” five years ago to reorganize and rebuild. At that time, the council had fewer than 9,000 members. Today it represents more than 24,000 state and university employees.
“This council is almost three times larger than it was…in 2007,” Saunders said. “Three times bigger – and it is a model for other councils in our union. You’ve been through a lot. But today, you, the new leaders and activists, have the right and responsibility to run this union – your union.”
Saunders mentioned several highlights in the council’s recent history, including winning fair share and a Correctional Officers Bill of Rights, and stopping furloughs and pay cuts in 2011.
International Vice Pres. and Exec. Dir. of Council 67 Glenard S. Middleton, Sr., also spoke, applauding Council 3’s victories and encouraging the delegates to keep leading the way in Maryland.
Wall Street Journal Duo: You’re Not Working Hard Enough
by Steve Kreisberg | December 21, 2012
In the spirit of the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, whose formula for success in battle included the phrase, “know thy enemy.”
Meet Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine.
They are right-wing bloggers and pseudo-researchers who appear regularly on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, hawking a plethora of anti-public employee theories. Most recently, they’ve claimed public employees “underwork.”
Biggs and Richwine [Editor’s note: “BigWhine” for short] have created a cottage industry for themselves by misusing and cherry-picking data for the sole purpose of denigrating the work and compensation of public employees. They say silly things like public school teachers make 52 percent more than they would in the private sector. Their “research” showing that teachers have less academic qualification to teach than other college graduates was so shoddy, their own right-wing think tanks banished it from their websites.
Biggs received fame, but not much fortune, as the advocate of former Pres. George W. Bush’s failed proposal to privatize Social Security. If the country had followed his lead in 2005, our economic losses would have been virtually incalculable when the stock market collapsed in 2008 and 2009. Fortunately, AFSCME members rallied nationwide and shut down Bush’s scheme.
Now this less-than dynamic duo is using data from a relatively new and obscure data set compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to bash the public sector. The American Time Use Survey is a purported measure of how Americans spend their time. Although they have not fully revealed how they have performed their analysis, Biggs and Richwine concluded that public workers spend about 5 percent less time working per year and, therefore, the loss of 627,000 public sector jobs since the official onset of the Great Recession really has not affected public services.
They must not get out much.
AFSCME members across the country report significant problems from reduced public services. Whether it’s closed libraries or reduced hours in Jacksonville, Fla. or Seattle, Wash., and all points in-between or unsafe staffing levels in correctional systems in Iowa, Illinois and virtually everywhere else, the public and the workers who serve us are feeling the pinch. There are fewer cops on the beat, longer response times for fire and other emergency services, and increased class sizes in our public schools. Parks are closing, arts and sports programs are ending.
While Biggs and Richwine may want America to embrace Mitt Romney’s call to reduce the number of police, firefighters and teachers, the American voters rejected that approach on Nov. 6.
Right-wing spin aside, the real danger is that our political leaders are now focused on an austerity program that will likely reduce economic growth by 1 percent in 2013. As we’ve seen in Europe, a reduction in public services and employment has profoundly negative effects on economic activity and quality of life. Note to BigWhine: our nation’s problem is not that we have too many public workers, it’s that we don’t have enough people working.
Steve Kreisberg is AFSCME’s Director of Collective Bargaining.
Saunders’ Focus: Ending the War on Working Families
December 20, 2012
On the Bill Press Show, which airs on Current TV and on radio stations across the country, AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders discussed continued attacks on working families and the need to stay in campaign mode in states like Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Watch an excerpt from the interview here:
AFSCME Women Leaders Gather for a Historic Meeting
by Kate Childs Graham | December 20, 2012
That’s the challenge AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes put to a group of 44 AFSCME women leaders, who gathered last Monday in Washington, DC. At this gathering, members of the National Women’s Advisory Committee (NWAC), International Vice Presidents and senior staff members had the opportunity to discuss their vision for the Women’s Leadership Academy.
Such development is crucial for AFSCME, whose membership is more than 54 percent women. Former Pres. Gerald W. McEntee announced the creation of the Women’s Leadership Academy at the last Women’s Conference in Wisconsin last fall and under Pres. Lee Saunders’ direction, the academy continues its robust development.
Earlier this year, National Women’s Advisory Committee members surveyed hundreds of AFSCME women, asking them their three wishes to enhance women’s leadership within the union. Overwhelmingly, union women said they want more:
- Education and training;
- Mentorship; and
- Opportunities for action.
On Monday, the group wrestled with these topics individually and collectively. Their discussions, along with the survey results, will inform the development and launch of the Women’s Leadership Academy in 2013.
Protect Medicare, Protect Nurses
by Kate Childs Graham | December 19, 2012
At the core of our campaign to protect Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security is this:
We want more jobs, not more cuts to programs that our communities rely on.
With the fiscal cliff looming, we must make it clear that cuts to Medicare would mean job losses for hundreds of thousands of nurses – many who are among AFSCME’s ranks.
In a report released in September, the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association projected that a two-percent cut to Medicare would mean more than 700,000 health care jobs lost through 2021.
Just days before the November election, AFSCME Sec.-Treas. Laura Reyes spoke to a group of nurses in California. There, she said, “Nurses do so much for the people in your community and you deserve so much respect, as professionals, and as proud union members.”
Protecting Medicare is one of many ways AFSCME intends to respect our nurses. Call your representatives and urge them to save nurses’ jobs.
AFSCME Retiree, 92, Doesn’t Let Age Slow Activism
by Clyde Weiss | December 19, 2012
AFSCME retiree Roslyn Sims. (Photo by Richard Lenhart)
People noticed when AFSCME retiree Rosyln Sims showed up at the Central Labor Council office in Youngstown to volunteer at the election phone bank. After all, a 92-year-old woman making phone calls to get out the vote for President Obama’s re-election wasn’t a common sight during the campaign.
For those who know her, however, her efforts were not a surprise. “Mom’s been an activist all of her life, and has been active in the Ohio AFSCME Retiree Chapter 1184, Subchapter 118,” says Joe Sims.
Rosyln is among the oldest of the hundreds of AFSCME retiree-members who volunteered for campaign activities throughout Ohio and across the country last month. Her age never slowed her.
“We probably went down there three or four days a week,” says Joe, who spent more than a month in Ohio with his mother working on the campaign. The two wanted to do what they could to help the President and other progressive candidates, but door-knocking was beyond her means so she worked the automatic phone system that dialed the numbers for her.
“There’s no coincidence why she was there. I believe she was sent by God to keep morale up.” said Richard Bailey, international representative for the Plasterers and Cement Masons union, who ran the campaign office. “It was a motivation for everybody there, including myself. You think, if she can do this every day, we can do it.”
“I was delighted to be able to participate in the election campaign, together with my son, to re-elect President Obama,” Rosyln said. “I think that, for the first time, we had a President who – and I want to include his wife as well – understood the problems of the average person who works for a livelihood. I felt we all benefitted from the passage of the health care bill, which is very important in the lives of people who work for a living.”
Rosyln, a librarian for the Youngstown City Schools before she retired, has activism in her blood, says her son. “Her mother was very active back in the ‘30s and ‘40s.”
“If you’re not satisfied with the conditions under which you live, do something about it,” says Rosyln. “I tried to.”
Will she volunteer in the next Presidential election four years from now? “Well, if I’m around, yes,” she laughs. “Absolutely.”
For many campaign activists, the fight for working families continued past Election Day. Add your voice to those calling on Congress to protect the middle class with jobs, not cuts.
In Illinois, the Anti-Worker Fraternity Gets a New Member in Quinn
by Anders Lindall and Cynthia McCabe | December 18, 2012
AFSCME members and supporters march in protest of Gov. Pat Quinn’s attacks on workers’ rights. (Photo by Dave Miller)
At a glance, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn may not seem to have much in common politically with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Quinn is a Democrat and the others are staunch Republicans. But in recent months, Quinn has joined their ignoble fraternity: governors intent on attacking workers’ rights and scapegoating public service workers.
In an unprecedented move in November, Quinn terminated the state government’s contract with AFSCME Council 31. (Previously, Council 31 members were working under a contract extension while negotiations on a new agreement continued.) The termination had little practical effect--all terms of employment are still in place under state law--it signaled Quinn’s lack of respect for collective bargaining. And in doing so, he lumped himself with the likes of Walker and Snyder.
“In 40 years of collective bargaining, Pat Quinn is the first and only Illinois governor to terminate a union contract,” AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer said. “His action will heighten employee frustration and provoke instability in the workplace.
Quinn’s decision to nullify the union contract follows his refusal to pay a negotiated wage increase due in the last year of the contract. An independent arbitrator found Quinn in violation of the contract and ordered him to pay, but the administration went to court seeking to overturn the arbitrator’s ruling. Earlier this month, a circuit court ruled that the contract must be honored.
In recent months, Quinn has also launched a full-blown assault on public employee pensions, attempting to portray them as “extravagant” and blaming them for the state’s fiscal woes. In fact, the real problem is the state tax system that favors big business and the rich.
Fully two-thirds of the corporations in Illinois pay no corporate income tax at all. Companies including Boeing and Motorola received tax breaks topping a billion dollars. The CEOs of those two companies had the infamous distinction of earning more in compensation in 2011 than their companies paid in corporate taxes.
“Rather than telling the truth, as a real leader would do, about the fact that the state’s problems are caused by a broken and unfair tax system that lets the rich off easy, Governor Quinn has instead tried to make public employees a scapegoat,” Bayer said.
In a signal of their disgust, AFSCME members last week protested at the Chicago Cultural Center where the governor was holding a fundraiser – a birthday party he threw for himself. In addition to anger about the contract termination, they protested the governor’s attacks on retirement security, affordable health care benefits, and contractually set wages.
On that last issue, a court recently sided with workers, ruling that Quinn could not unilaterally cancel collectively bargained raises for state employees. That was the same conclusion of an arbitration process earlier, which Quinn ignored, forcing the court action. He is now appealing the court ruling.
The State-Journal Register last week admonished Quinn for his chest-thumping attacks on workers and their words should serve as the epitaph for his failed campaign: “Quinn’s quiet war on the collective bargaining rights of public employees was foolish from the start.”
AFSCME Stands With Its Sisters and Brothers Responding to Newtown Tragedy
by Pablo Ros | December 17, 2012
In the wake of last week’s massacre in Newtown, Conn., AFSCME is standing with its sisters and brothers who responded to the emergency, providing both moral support and resources.
“It is excruciating to contemplate the grief that has descended on the families of those who have lost a cherished child or spouse,” said AFSCME Pres. Lee Saunders, recalling that many of the town employees who responded when a gunman opened fire inside Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday morning are AFSCME members.
All 44 members of the Newtown Police Department are members of AFSCME Local 3153, Council 15. Town police dispatchers belong to AFSCME Local 1303-136, and public works employees to AFSCME Local 1303-200. Board of Education Nurses are members of AFSCME Local 1303-215, Council 4.
“In the aftermath of this tragedy, AFSCME members will be helping as our nation comes to terms with this tragedy and seeks to move forward,” Pres. Saunders said. “We will provide whatever assistance and support they need in the coming weeks and months.”
Jeffrey Matchett, executive director of AFSCME Council 15, the Connecticut Council of Police, said the council’s “thoughts and prayers go out to our courageous members who rushed to the scene and helped save the lives of countless potential victims. Their heroism will never be forgotten. We are proud to call them our brothers and sisters.”
Matchett said the council will provide health services to all members and their spouses to help them cope with the aftermath of the tragedy, and guidance in how to talk with their children about the event. He also said support meetings will be made available to all its members who have experienced the impact of the tragedy.
“These meetings will be open to any first responder and will be facilitated by various Council 15 police peer-support teams, firefighter peer-support teams, and other behavioral health professionals. We encourage all of our members to take part in at least one of these support meetings.”
In a letter posted on the website of AFSCME Council 4 -- which among its 35,000 members represents many state and local government employees in Connecticut -- Executive Director Sal Luciano said the council “mourns those who lost their lives and prays for the families who must piece together their lives in the aftermath of the mind-numbing violence that took place.”
He also thanked Newtown school teachers, administrators and staff, as well as first responders and town employees.
AFSCME is calling for commonsense and meaningful action on gun laws and ensuring access to services for the mentally ill. And we join efforts like those of the American Federation of Teachers, who in a letter to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, are urging him to veto Senate Bill 59, which would allow people to bring concealed firearms into schools, college dorms, churches, hospitals, bars and sports stadiums.
“Firearms have absolutely no place in our schools,” states the letter, signed by AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten and AFT Michigan Pres. David Hecker. “Permitting firearms in schools—visible or concealed—enables a dangerous set of circumstances... We should be doing everything we can to reduce the possibility of any gunfire in schools, and concentrate on ways to keep all guns off school property and ensure the safety of children and school employees.”
AFSCME has set up an online card to send notes of solidarity and sympathy to our sisters and brothers who are police officers, dispatchers, school nurses and public works employees in Newtown. You can sign the card here.
