| With your contract you're agreeing to have any dispute mediated and in the state of the companies choice, usually with their choice of mediation company. This not only gives them a lot more control but almost guarantees that they will prevail if you want to act up cranky about them screwing you over.
However there is something in the recent State labor disputes that has been overlooked. Gov. Walker and others are saying that it is the pensions of the Unions and their need to fund them that is part of why the States are in a budget whole. You see most public employees have a lower salary than they would in the private sector, because they have negotiated a pension.
It is akin to having your boss take a certain amount of money out every month and put it in a 401K. What is different is that there is defined benefit for taking less pay now. CEO's of major corporations do this all the time, but they don't call it a pension plan they call it deferred compensation.
The idea of paying less and then paying a pension is a good one for states as long as they do what they are supposed to do and fund the pension plans. The problem is that because it is a long term issue every time Republicans take the State Houses they cut taxes, without thinking about what it will do to the pension obligations they have. Or maybe they are aware of the obligations and just don't care.
Funding a pension fund has been an obligation for a long time, it is a bill just like any other, but it has not been treated that way. The way it should work is that if your fund it under then you have to raise taxes to cover it, just as you would have to raise taxes to cover salaries.
To get around this the States have generally invested this huge pot of money. That is a good idea as long as you don't take huge risks with the money or your financial regulatory system is not compromised. We have seen that we do not have the appropriate amount of regulation and so these funds have taken a huge hit.
Is that the fault of the workers? Hell no! Yet the argument coming out of the mouths of the Republican Governors (like a bunch of ventriloquist dummies with the Koch Brothers hand up their butts to the elbow) is that they have been greedy in deferring their compensation until retirement and now we need to change the contract with them to reflect that.
Why is it that it is okay for CEO's to defer compensation and continue being lavishly paid after they leave and it is not okay for a cop to have a pension after 20 years of taking less money in the front end?
What is worse about this whole thing is the fact that the States have been falling down in their obligations. It is not until they had an aging workforce that the chickens of underfunding or mismanaging their pension funds have come home to roost. Where are the defenders of the All Mighty Contract now? Why are they not gnashing their teeth about the betrayal of a contract that the state made, of its own free will and is failing to live up to?
I have come to the conclusion that I don't think it fair to ask the public employees to contribute more to their pension fund until the states make good on the funding obligations they agreed to in the past. Without that how can there be any assumption of good faith? The funds are not in trouble because the workers demanded too much, after al they don't get any of those benefits for decades, so it is the financial shenanigans of using money that should have funded this to cut taxes that in large part led to this turn of events.
I understand why Labor in Wisconsin caved on the monetary demands of Gov Walker. It made their overall position stronger and highlighted the fact that this was more about killing the rights of Labor to negotiate with management than it ever was about money.
Still there is a need to stand up to and point out the failures of just about every State to take the appropriate actions to meet their contractual obligations. They could have negotiated less in pensions long ago. They could have kept taxes at whatever level was required to fund the pension funds, they could have chosen not to take risks with money that was never really theirs to risk in the first place, but they did none of those things.
The point of the Labor movement and unions is to balance power between the workers and management. It is a never ending struggle as management is always going to have more money and power, all Labor has is the power of the collective will of the members and the ability to deny the fruits of their labor to management.
For too long we have been passive about letting Labor be pushed around. We have stood by and let them fight the fight of everyone who is not part of upper management for decent working conditions, for days off, for reasonable increases in pay. Even as the power of Labor has waned they have fought this fight and all of us have benefited.
Now it is time for us all to stand up and insist that contracts with Labor be honored. If that means corporations and fat cats have to pay more in taxes, well that is only fair, as they have benefited from the tax breaks in the past. There is only a problem when they benefit in the past and then the workers are asked to make up the difference in the present. Having to take less pay and then being screwed on your pension is an unacceptable double whammy for our teachers and police and nurses and firefighters and everyone else that works in the public sector There is enough brain damage with dealing with politicians as your bosses, we should not be screwing them on pay they earned too.
The floor is yours. |
