A Bright Spot: No Termination Here
An AFSCME-led coalition defeated Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to wreck California's public pension system.
Living up to his Hollywood billing, the Terminator, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) set out last year to strip our members, and those of other unions, of their retirement security. Fortunately, a cast of thousands — public employees led by AFSCME, plus other unions and organizations — worked together and defeated the Governator.
Like President Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security, Schwarzenegger's reckless and mean-spirited scheme — to replace a public employee pension system with a 401(k)-style plan run by a private, for-profit investment company — was blocked by a determined, grassroots effort. Union members and their allies — the real action heroes of this drama — forced Schwarzenegger to drop his pension initiative before it reached the ballot. They also defeated all four of his initiatives that did make it that far, including a so-called "paycheck protection" measure aimed at crippling the political strength of public employee unions.
But this is a cautionary tale: Republican governors and legislators in other states (see state listing) are working even now to end their own states' commitments to provide secure retirement for their employees, and Schwarzenegger has threatened to resurrect his own plan.
BATTLING THE BARBARIAN. The clash of ideas began in December 2004, when Assemblyman Keith Richman (R) introduced legislation that would ban all state, school and local public employees hired after July 1, 2007, from participating in a traditional pension system. In his State of the State address a month later, Schwarzenegger endorsed the bills.
AFSCME's lobbyists in Sacramento worked quickly to bottle up the bills in committee. So Schwarzenegger sidestepped the legislature to push a ballot initiative that would accomplish the same goal, delighting anti-worker ideologues such as Grover Norquist, the arch-conservative head of Americans for Tax Reform and a key proponent of President Bush's Social Security privatization scheme. Norquist declared: "When it goes to the ballot, it will be one of our highest priorities."
To fight back, AFSCME and other public employee unions formed a coalition: California Families Against Privatizing Retirement, representing nearly 2.5 million public employees, including teachers, firefighters, police officers and health care workers. They spread their message, distributing flyers, holding rallies and dogging the governor at fundraisers. "It was a team effort," recalls Council 36 Vice Pres. Yves Chery, who serves as treasurer of L.A. County Probation Officers Local 685 and as a trustee of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association.
Common sense and decency, along with research, revealed a glaring vulnerability in the pension privatization plan. Closing the pension systems to future employees (or existing workers who switched employers) would eliminate death and disability coverage. The union coalition, realizing it had found the plan's Achilles' heel, kept quiet about it until it was too late for the plan's authors to make any changes. Once that deadline passed, the coalition unleashed its forces, aimed squarely at the heartless death and disability issue.
In a strategic move, police, firefighters and widows of fallen heroes were made the public face of the unions' campaign. "It was a conscious decision to put up our best argument, as far as public perception went," explains Richard Cabral, a trustee on the Contra Costa County Employees' Retirement Association and president of Council 57. "We were all in the same boat."
HASTA LA VISTA, BABY. Throughout the campaign, AFSCME members filled the ranks at protest rallies. "The green shirts were there in force," says Cabral. "Every time the governor made an appearance — public or private — our 'member action teams' were there. We weren't going to let him go." Protesters even showed up when Schwarzenegger appeared out of state. For example, in Washington, D.C., union members and their allies protested in March 2005 outside a hotel where the governor attended a fundraiser.
Weeks later, more than 2,000 union members, including many from AFSCME, converged on the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in San Francisco, where the governor was again attending a fundraiser, this time for a slate of anti-worker ballot initiatives, including the pension measure. He arrived three hours early to avoid the demonstration, but the protesters were there in force to greet him. Two days later, Schwarzenegger publicly abandoned his effort to ruin the state's pension system. He vowed, however, "Come next year, we will have the pension reforms."
"I'm sure he'll be back," warns AFSCME member and pension trustee Priya Sara Mathur. When that happens, workers will have to battle harder than ever. "We'll remain united on this issue," Mathur declares. "It has energized public employees and members of labor across the state." - C.W.
