Pensions Aren’t the Problem for State Budgets
This is a crosspost by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders from Huffington Post.
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the Pravda of the 1 percent, is at it again, continuing its push to gut the retirement security of millions of middle class workers across the country while enriching the Wall Street moneymen who just three years ago took our economy over the cliff.
Virtually everyone agrees that our nation faces a retirement security crisis, but the Journal last week published a shameful op-ed calling for the elimination of pensions for nurses, firefighters, corrections officers and others who still have them. Having punched private-sector workers retirement in the gut, these folks won’t be happy until the whole concept of a secure retirement for working Americans is a thing of the past.
The typical AFSCME member — men and women who plow our streets, care for the sick, protect our children, clean our buildings and keep our communities safe — receives a pension of approximately $19,000 a year after a career of public service. The employees have earned and paid for these pensions. Employee contribution rates commonly amount to 3 percent to 10 percent of their paychecks. These contributions, combined with investment earnings, usually account for 75 percent or more of all pension benefit funding. Read the rest of this entry »
New Film Sheds Light on Perils Faced by Detroit Firefighters
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As Detroit’s economy reaches unimaginable lows, firefighters go to work in a nearly bankrupt city set aflame by arsonists—some by building owners looking to collect insurance and others by gang members. The perils faced by these front-line first responders captured the imaginations of filmmakers Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez, who are putting the finishing touches on “Burn: The Detroit Firefighter Documentary.”
The filmmakers are raising funds to finish the film on the site Kickstarter.com, where they describe what motivated them to make the film:
We started the project in December 2008, after the death of Detroit firefighter Walter Harris, who perished fighting an arson fire in an abandoned house. Everyone can agree—public safety is a national and local priority. But fire, police and EMS across the nation are struggling with intense budget cuts to gear and manpower. Although our film is about the Detroit Fire Department [DFD], the DFD faces issues that can now be found in nearly every major American city. Our goal is to share their story so that everyone can appreciate and value their first responders, no matter where they live.
The Republican Jobs Plan: Jobs? What Jobs?
To paraphrase that classic Wendy’s hamburger ad, when it comes to the Republicans’ so-called jobs plan, “Where’s the Jobs?
Senate Republicans successfully filibustered President Obama’s American Jobs Act and blocked a vote on a break-out provision that would enable some 400,000 teachers, firefighters and other first responders to get or keep a job. Republicans vow to do the same on an upcoming infrastructure jobs bill and other pieces of American Jobs Act when they come up for votes. Meanwhile, House Republicans have even refused to put the bill to a vote.
Why are they fighting so hard against creating jobs? Because they claim they have a better jobs plan. Oh yeah? Since when is a plan that’s heart and soul is tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, the rollback of essential federal regulations—including Wall Street reform—and the repeal of health care reform a jobs bill?
Take a look at some of these comparisons of the American Jobs Act and the Republican jobs bill.
- The American Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs, according to Moody’s Analytics. Moody’s says that the Republican jobs plan won’t “address [the cause of the current weakness] in the short term….In fact, they could be harmful in the short term.” Read the rest of this entry »
Iowans Tell Wisconsin Gov. Walker to Go Home
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AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer Cathy Sherwin sends us this report.
When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker headed over to Iowa to raise money for the right-wing special interest group, the Heritage Foundation, union members and Occupy Des Moines protesters were there to greet him. A crowd of more than 200 filled the sidewalk outside the fundraiser: teachers and jobless Iowans, construction workers and retirees, community activists and families with children.
Joining the crowd, Iowa Federation of Labor President Ken Sagar talked with reporters about why this “Welcome Walker” protest was so important.
Gov. Walker needs to understand that we recognize what he’s done to working people and the middle class in Wisconsin and we don’t need that here in Iowa. We don’t need to destroy jobs, we need to create jobs.
Inside the private event, Iowa’s Gov. Terry Branstad seems to have been listening intently to Read the rest of this entry »
Ohio Firefighters, Working Families Rally to Vote ‘NO’ on Issue 2
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Deborah Dion with the Ohio AFL-CIO field program sends us this.
More than 250 firefighters and working families rallied for an early vote in Mansfield, Ohio, to defeat Issue 2. Voting “NO” on Issue 2 would repeal S.B. 5, passed earlier this year, that gutted collective bargaining rights for public employees. Working families gathered at the historic Mansfield Fire Museum, which celebrates firefighter history, heritage and the first responders that keep the community safe. Immediately following the rally, a caravan of a dozen jeeps carried 85 firefighters to the Richland County Board of Elections where they cast their vote against Issue 2/S.B. 5.
Click here for more photos from the event.
Speaking at the rally, Dan Crow, president of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Local 266 and an active firefighter with the City of Mansfield, said: Read the rest of this entry »
Ohio Panelists Detail Impact of Kasich’s Issue 2/S.B. 5 on Working Women
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Mike Gillis, Ohio AFL-CIO communications director, writes about a panel in Ohio earlier today in which participants agreed that women will be hard-hit by the state’s newly passed bill (S.B. 5) that takes collective bargaining rights away from public employees—and why voters need to go to the polls Nov. 8 to vote NO on Issue 2, to kill the bill.
Experts on women’s workplace issues and women from Ohio’s workforce detailed their concern for Kasich’s agenda this morning at a panel in Cleveland on the state’s S.B. 5/Issue 2. The panel, moderated by journalist, author and Pepper Pike City Councilwoman Jill Miller Zimon, offered a variety of perspectives on why doing away with collective bargaining would be disproportionally detrimental to women. Panelists also discussed how, with unemployment increasing in Ohio and more layoffs and cuts expected from Gov. John Kasich’s budget, Issue 2/S.B. 5 would only make the growing jobs crisis in the state worse and has only divided and distracted Ohioans from real policies that will help grow jobs.
Ohio Gov. Says It’s ‘Fine’ to Distort Views of Great-Grandmother in Ad
AFL-CIO Field Communications Coordinator Andrew Richards sends us this follow up from Ohio on the dirty tricks campaign to kill collective bargaining for public employees.
Although nearly every TV station in Ohio and West Virginia are refusing to air a campaign ad that distorts the views of Marlene Quinn, a 78-year-old great-grandmother from Cincinnati, Ohio, Gov. John Kasich and his operatives defend their decision to use their deceptive commercial. (To date, 30 stations have pulled the ad.)
Kasich said today it’s “fine” that the campaign uses Quinn in a dishonest television spot that leads viewers to believe she supports Kasich’s move to gut collective bargaining for public employees—when, in fact, the opposite is true. Quinn first appeared in an ad as a strong opponent of Kasich’s bill, in which she urged all Ohioans to vote “No” on Issue 2, because Cincinnati firefighters saved her grandson and great-granddaughter from a burning home.
‘Right to Work’ for Less Defeated Again in New Hampshire
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AFL-CIO communications staffer Nora Frederickson sends us this report from New Hampshire.
The Republican Speaker of the New Hampshire House enlisted no fewer than five Republican presidential candidates today in an unsuccessful attempt to convince state representatives to override Gov. John Lynch’s veto of a “right to work” for less bill (H.B. 474).
In a callous move to bully and bore lawmakers who opposed the ”right to work” law, Speaker Bill O’Brien turned the legislative session into a Republican presidential forum, inviting the candidates to spend more than three hours giving stump speeches to a captive audience of both Democrat and Republican lawmakers. More than 100 firefighters, teachers and other workers from every edge of the state turned out to protest the potential vote on “right to work” for less and to ask the candidates to keep state issues out of the debate around the primary.
The Republican candidates were quick to endorse O’Brien’s anti-worker agenda, sucking up to him on a state issue that they knew little to nothing about. As Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) read from her prepared remarks, residents booed as she erroneously stated:
United to Support Wisconsin Workers
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This is a cross-post from the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Blog.
On Saturday, March 12, an estimated 185,000 concerned citizens gathered to stand up against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s extreme attacks on workers’ rights and Wisconsin’s middle class. Despite the seriousness of the situation, the energy on the ground was unprecedented as young and old, union and nonunion, public sector and private sector came together to stand up for Wisconsin’s working class.
In the biggest rally in Madison since the protests started, hundreds of thousands of working families, small business owners, farmers, students, religious groups, women’s rights groups, environmentalists, private-sector workers and public-sector workers gathered to say that worker rights are human rights and they must be protected.
Thousands of Wisconsin farmers brought their tractors down to Capitol Square, “pulling together for working families,” and held a Tractorcade around the Capitol. Tractors displayed signs such as “Don’t Farm Out Our Jobs,” “Wisconsin Farmers Support Public Employees” and “Plowing Forward for Democracy.”
Thousands Continue Wisconsin Action for Workers’ Rights
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After daylong protests yesterday drew as many as 30,000 people in Madison, hundreds of Wisconsin workers, students and allies camped out last night in the Capitol Rotunda as a hearing on Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) budget bill that eliminates collective bargaining rights for nearly all of the state’s public service workers went past midnight.
The state Senate is set to vote on the bill today. It was approved last night by the Joint Finance Committee on a straight party-line vote with all Republicans backing the attack on workers’ rights. Today, thousands of workers and their supporters from around the state enter the third day of a massive protest against Walker’s plan.
Meanwhile in Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich (R) is mirroring Walker’s assault on workers with similar legislation to strip collective bargaining rights from teachers, EMTs and other public workers, thousands of workers will rally against the bill in Columbus today.
Last night in Madison, Wis., as the crowds stayed far into the night outside the Capitol, too, Democratic state Rep. Cory Mason said:
This is the most anti-worker legislation in Wisconsin history. We are here tonight to tell Gov. Walker that this proposal has gone too far. Brothers and sisters, this is the fight of our generation. This is the moment to transcend party politics and do what is right by the hard working people who voted you in office.
