From the Blog

• Jan 15 Register Now for Dynamic Legislative Conference Want to raise your voice for workers? Come to Washington, DC, and do just that.
• Dec 21 Wall Street Journal Duo: You’re Not Working Hard Enough Right-wing bloggers Biggs and Richwine ignore data that show lay-offs cut public services.
• Oct 12 This Campaign Hits Home for Workers AFSCME members, president tackle 1% Mitt Romney’s attack on the 47%
• Oct 09 We Are AFSCME: Campaign Volunteer, Retiree Renita Hoover Wisconsin activist urges fellow retirees to get involved. She’s been doing it for decades.
• Sep 26 The Referees Are Fighting for All of Us Billionaire team owners are trying to take the professional NFL officials’ pensions away.
• Aug 30 Paul Ryan Acceptance Speech Light on Reality Wisconsin retirees: Paul Ryan would “tear seniors’ safety net to shreds.”
• Aug 29 Warren to Christie: Not So Fast Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren calls out Gov. Chris Christie on his RNC keynote speech.
• Aug 20 On Social Security’s Birthday: Strengthen and Preserve It (Medicare, Too!) Celebrating our country’s most successful insurance program for individuals, retirees, the disabled and family survivors.
• Aug 11 Romney Taps Medicare-Slashing Paul Ryan as VP Pick Congressman designed a budget that hurts seniors, working families.
• Aug 08 Report Gives House’s Extreme Anti-Worker Agenda a Failing Grade Right-wing Republicans get an “F” when it comes to creating jobs and protecting workers’ rights.
• Jul 19 Romney Protest Shines Light on Why He’s No Good for America Union members, allies, protest Romney’s policies at GOP Presidential candidate’s fundraiser in Toledo, Ohio.
• Jul 18 AFSCME Member Discusses Retirement Security at White House New York retiree Stuart Leibowitz spoke of the need to preserve Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
• May 31 Alan Simpson Slams Seniors Group for Disagreeing With Him on Social Security Former Sen. Alan Simpson targets seniors for standing up for retirement security.
• May 04 Public Pension Opponents Argue from Both Sides to Distort Truth Dean Baker contends that politicians are “using heaping doses of the politics of envy" to divide workers.
• May 02 San Diego Businesses Speak Out Against Threat to Retirement Security from Proposition B The measure is being used to score political points at the expense of city employees.
• Apr 19 ‘BigWhine’ Should Stop Making Myth About Workers’ Compensation Despite repeated efforts to confuse the issue, the facts show public workers are not overpaid.
• Apr 13 Romney’s Clearer Path Thrusts Ryan Budget in the Spotlight Republican budget plan attacks working families, slashes benefits, and ends Medicaid coverage for millions.
• Mar 30 Five Myths about the Ryan Budget The top myths about Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan in 140 characters or less.
• Mar 13 Report: NY Governor’s Plan Cuts Retirement Security 40 Percent Study by independent organization confirms benefit cut.
• Jan 17 Rhode Island Decision Victory for Retirees Judge says City of Pawtucket cannot unilaterally cut health benefits promised to retired employees.
• Jan 17 Fear of Inadequate Retirement Savings Forcing More Older Americans to Keep Working Shift from secure employee pension plans to riskier 401(k) plans is largely to blame.
• Jan 13 Killing Pensions to Benefit the 1 Percent Wall Street Journal continues its push to gut the retirement security of American workers.
• Nov 22 Court Says a Promise Is a Promise California Supreme Court rules cities and counties cannot reduce health benefits promised to existing retirees.
• Sep 15 Rhode Island Public Workers Win Key Pension Ruling Judge rules R.I. public employees should have their day in court in pension battle.
• Aug 05 House GOP’s Cantor Says Medicare & Medicaid Promises May Not Be Kept As programs turn 46, Rep. Cantor threatens to hang millions of Americans out to dry.
• Jul 21 Gut & Scrap The Republican proposal to gut and scrap Medicare looks like the Ryan plan on steroids.
• Jul 06 AFSCME’s Saunders: Current Fights Are About ‘Direction of the Country’ In magazine interview, Secretary-Treasurer Saunders discusses attacks on workers' rights and the middle class.
• Jun 30 Telling the Truth about Public Pension Systems Pension experts rebut the myth that public pensions are unsustainable.
• May 10 Shining a Light on House GOP Budget Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid The Republican budget plan replaces Medicare with a voucher system and slashes Medicaid spending.
• Apr 26 Telling the Whole Story About Public Employee Pension Funds Pew Center on the States portrays the public pension system as "broken," but the facts don't back that up.
• Mar 16 Maine’s Governor Won’t Take His Own Medicine Gov. LePage has exempted himself from a plan to increase pension contributions from public service workers.
• Mar 14 Maryland AFSCME Members to Rally in Annapolis Today Protest targets proposed budget cuts to public services and education, changes to retirement security and health care benefits.
• Mar 11 Republicans Take Aim at Social Security Republican legislators in both the U.S. House and Senate have now started moving toward cutting Social Security.
• Mar 09 Origins of the So-Called Pension Crisis Noted economist Dean Baker has written what could be best described as the definitive explanation of the state of public sector pension plans.
• Feb 20 On, Wisconsin! Amazing, inspiring video from University of Wisconsin student Matt Wisniewski features three days of footage (Feb 15-17) from the Madison, WI protest against the SB11 budget repair bill.
• Feb 16 Gagging Workers Is Un-American As the world watched the people of Egypt take to the streets in an effort to exercise their rights and have their voices heard, here at home in the USA, plans are being put into place to silence workers, lower their wages, cut their benefits [...]
• Feb 14 Video: Shaking the Wisconsin State House On Valentine's Day, University of Wisconsin-Madison students filled the Wisconsin Capitol building to protest proposals by Republican Gov. Scott Walker that would reduce funding for higher education and decimate collective bargaining rights.
• Feb 14 Wisconsin AFL-CIO Ads Against Attacks on Worker Rights The Wisconsin AFL-CIO launched an advertising campaign over the weekend to alert the public to the radical plan by Republican Gov. Scott Walker to strip almost all collective bargaining rights from state and local public employees.
• Feb 09 O'Reilly Spreads Lies About Public Employee Pensions FACT: The average annual pension of an AFSCME retiree is $19,000. As Pres. Gerald W. McEntee wrote in USA Today, the real problems facing cities and states were caused by Wall Street, not public workers.
• Jan 28 Responding to Wall Street Journal Attacks
• Jan 26 California’s State Treasurer: States Should Not Consider Bankruptcy Some conservative governors and state legislators and their right-wing allies are floating a dangerous suggestion that threatens the retirement security of public sector workers: Have states declare bankruptcy to get out of their pension obligations.
• Jan 19 Pres. McEntee: Blame Wall Street A defense of public services and our pensions by AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee was featured on the opinion page of USA Today this week.
• Jan 19 AFSCME Members to Maryland Lawmakers: ‘Enough is Enough!’ Approximately 150 members of AFSCME Maryland met with their state representatives in Annapolis on Jan. 12 – the first day of the legislative session – to send a clear message that the state’s budget should not be balanced on their backs.
• Dec 23 Report from the Public Pension Leadership Meeting AFSCME activists, local leaders and retirees met with key experts and allies to develop strategies and tools to defend our modest pensions against this unprecedented assault.
• Dec 22 Gov. Christie Blames Economic Crisis on Working Families In a one-sided "60 Minutes" report that aired this week, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) showed viewers he's more interested in scoring political points than solving state and local budget challenges and getting the economy moving.
• Dec 02 Stop Believing the Myths About 401(k) Plans The former publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote a column this week calling public employee pensions “grotesque shadows of their initial good intention” and pushing private savings plans as the future of retirement.
• Nov 03 Voters Want a Recovery That Works for Everyone “Angry voters sent a clear message on Tuesday: Much, much more must be done to put America back to work. But voters rejected right-wing and Tea Party candidates [...]
• Oct 15 The Real Story on Public Employees Benefits This week, Ezra Klein has an excellent piece on the Washington Post’s website that gets to the truth behind public employees benefits. He demolishes the myths that too many right wing politicians and propagandists cling to [...]
• Oct 06 Social Security Sense and Nonsense In a new paper and podcast I’ve tried to correct some of the misinformation that critics of Social Security have been spreading about the program. Here are the facts. Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program.
• Sep 28 America's Failed 401(k) Experiment While the unfunded pension liabilities in many public retirement funds have received an inordinate amount of attention, the larger retirement deficit of most Americans is not generating the level of concern that it deserves.
• Aug 25 New Jersey's Pension Fraud Hurts Investors, Taxpayers and Retirees Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did something it has never done before. It charged the state of New Jersey with fraudulently misleading investors about the health of the state's pension plan
• Jul 15 “Let’s Talk About Facts” Watch AFSCME Director of Research Kerry Korpi stand up to attacks on public employees and our pensions during an appearance on CNBC. At issue: should states cut public pensions to balance ballooning budgets?
• May 04 Pensions: The Sky Is Not Falling Whenever the economy is in dire straits, pundits and demagogues start looking for scapegoats. An all-time favorite is the myth of public employees and their allegedly fat – yet underfunded – pensions.
• Dec 03 Wall Street By the Numbers Across the country this holiday season, Main Street is being starved while Ebenezer Scrooge and his Wall Street friends are feasting.
• Nov 04 Victory for Proxy Access Yesterday we wrote about a critical vote in the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee which pitted regular people and our pensions against the Chamber of Commerce and The Business Roundtable.
• Nov 03 Holding Corporate Directors Accountable The current economic meltdown has destroyed $11 trillion in family wealth, pushed unemployment above 10 percent and threatened millions with home foreclosure. Part of the solution is to hold corporate directors accountable for their risky decisions [...]
• Oct 28 Mutual Funds and Overpaid CEOs CNBC's "Street Signs" host Erin Burnett says the numbers take her breath away: mutual funds consistently vote in favor of management proposals that increase executive pay and against shareholder efforts to bring compensation in line with performance.
• Sep 21 Fed's Say on Pay CEO pay reform remains a key element of the federal government’s financial reform agenda. The Federal Reserve recently announced that the agency will police banks’ pay policies to ensure they do not encourage excessive risk taking.
• Aug 18 They Never Learn… Stephen Schwartzman, CEO of financial firm Blackstone made a sweet $702 million in 2008. Never mind that Blackstone stock has plummeted 40 percent over the last two years.
• Jul 13 Public Pensions Support Vital Services, Stimulate the Economy Public pensions offer good value for taxpayers. In addition to providing modest but secure retirements for public employees — emergency responders, firefighters, health care workers, teachers, police officers and more.
• Apr 30 Pay for Performance? No Thanks, I’m a CEO Did you know that Citigroup CEO Vikram S. Pandit raked in a sweet $38 million in total compensation last year while running his company to the ground? Let’s not forget that Citigroup has already received $45 billion in federal bailout funds.
• Feb 06 End the Madness of Excessive CEO Pay For years, AFSCME has been leading the fight to rein in the grotesque and excessive paychecks that unaccountable boards of directors have been giving too many of America's CEOs.
• Jan 30 Shame on You, Wall Street It’s no mystery. The economy is ailing, working families are fighting hard to make ends meet and this week alone, American companies reported as many as 65,000 job cuts.
• Jan 27 AFSCME Pension Plan Calls for Corporate Accountability In the wake of our current financial crisis, the AFSCME Employees Pension Plan has announced its 2009 shareholder program with an emphasis on reasonable executive pay and more director accountability.
• Nov 20 Public Employee Pensions Are Not the Problem
• Sep 26 A Quick Take on CEO Pay
• Sep 25 Here's Your Blank Check
• Sep 18 Wall Street vs. Main Street
• Jan 28 The Fight for Investor Rights is Also Our Fight
• Oct 30 GAO Finds State and Local Pension Systems Are Well Funded
• May 17 Enough Is Enough