Pledge Your Support for Workers at American Airlines
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Last week, American Airlines announced plans to eliminate the jobs of 13,000 workers and dump pension plans for nearly 90,000 workers pensions as part of its bankruptcy plan.
You can show you support for American Airlines employees by going to www.isupportamericanjobs.com and pledging to support the workers by telling public officials, the news media and community leaders that employees at American Airlines and regional carrier American Eagle and all workers dependent on these airlines must be treated fairly.
In the day since the pledge has been posted more than 10,000 people have signed. Click here add your name.
Transport Workers (TWU) President James Little—about 9,000 TWU members work at American—says the “plan is wrong for American and wrong for America.”
The same management team that took hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses while the airline was losing money now wants workers to pay a high price for their mistakes.
Read more from Little here.
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 »
Nurses Rally Across the Country in Support of UK Strikers
NNU Communications Director Chuck Idelson sends us this report.
Thousands of nurses from National Nurses United (NNU) along with other union members and allies held rallies in six cities across the country today to support the nearly 2 million British workers striking in the United Kingdom.
U.S. nurses held the actions at British consulates in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando (Fla.), and San Francisco, and at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., to protest the conservative ruling party’s plans to cut public pensions in the United Kingdom.
Corporations in Britain, like the United States, are sitting on massive cash reserves while government officials in both nations push reductions in retirement security and other cuts.
In Washington, D.C., where 200 nurses and their supporters gathered at the Embassy of the United Kingdom, Karen Higgins, an ICU nurse at the Boston Medical Center who is co-president of National Nurses United, said
If people have to keep working with no pensions, it is hurting everyone.
Rajini Raj, RN, agreed:
We’re here in support of the more than 2 million people striking in Great Britain today. We know an injury to one is an injury to all even if there is an ocean between us.
Jos Williams, president of the DC Central Labor Council, summed it up this way:
Today, it is the British workers and tomorrow it is the American workers.
Study Finds Traditional Pension More Cost Effective for States and Workers
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A new study finds that defined-benefit pension plans are not only preferred by state employees, but more cost efficient for state governments than defined-contribution plans like 401(k)s.
The report, “Decisions, Decisions: Retirement Plan Choices for Public Employees and Employers“ by the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS), studied seven states that offer both defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans to workers. It also looked at two states, Nebraska and West Virginia, that switched from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution for new employees–only to switch back to traditional pensions because they were more cost efficient for the state and the workers.
Ilana Boivie, one of the study’s authors says:
Employers understand that pensions remain the most cost-effective way to fund a retirement benefit, and that switching from pensions to individual accounts can drive up costs for taxpayers. These economic facts coupled with strong employee preferences for pensions suggest that public employers are unlikely to mimic the trend away from pensions that has occurred in the private sector.
Click here for the full report.
Bill Clinton: Unions Are ‘America’s Employment Bankers’
Former President Bill Clinton yesterday singled out the efforts of the union movement in creating massive numbers of jobs through union pension fund investments. Speaking yesterday at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), Clinton praised the AFL-CIO and AFT for already providing $1 billion in pension fund investments to improve infrastructure and increase energy efficiency. (Watch the video of the event here. )
He also called on financial institutions and corporations–which are sitting on $2 trillion in cash without creating jobs–to follow the lead of the union movement and “loosen up all this money and put America back to work. If you did that, you’d have a million jobs in no time.”
With AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and AFT President Randi Weingarten on the stage with him, Clinton said: Read the rest of this entry »
Michigan Workers Blast Snyder’s Gift to Biz, Cuts to Schools and Poor
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More than 7,000 Michigan workers, students, seniors and others rallied against Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) proposed budget that cuts corporate taxes by $1.7 billion but raises taxes for low-income families, cuts $900 million from education, taxes pensions and slashes vital services.
Check out photos here and check out the Twitter feed at #miunion.
As Herb Sanders, AFSCME Council 25 director, said:
This is a call to battle of everyone who is affected by that budget and everyone affected by the legislation that would take us back 75 years…. This is a showing of solidarity like none before in the state of Michigan, and when we have solidarity, they will have to come to the table.
Mac Helvorsell of Macomb Township, a maintenance worker for Macomb County, carried a sign that said, “Legislators stop the attack on the middle class” and wore a T-shirt supporting AFSCME, one of the unions that represent public employees. He told the Detroit News:
I’m here to stop the attacks on workers, the middle class and schools.
Thousands Protest Michigan Budget that Cuts Biz Taxes, Raises Tax on Poor, Seniors
Thousands of Michigan workers, students, seniors and others are heading for the state capitol in Lansing today for a massive rally against Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) proposed budget that cuts $900 million from education, taxes pensions, raises taxes for low-income families and slashes vital services–all while, cutting business taxes by $1.7 billion.
The budget battle follows last month’s fight over Snyder’s “financial martial law” bill.
The new law allows Snyder to declare a “financial emergency” in a city or school district and appoint a manager with broad powers, including the ability to fire local elected officials, break teachers’ and public workers’ contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and even eliminate entire cities or school districts without any public input.
Also last month Snyder signed a new law that cuts state unemployment benefits from 26 weeks to 20 weeks. Read the rest of this entry »
Maryland Workers Blast Cuts to Education, Health and Retirement
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Some 15,000 Maryland teachers, government workers and other public employees rallied and marched in Annapolis last night to protect public school funding and workers’ health and retirement security. Bills before the state legislature call for big cutbacks in all three.
Before marching to the State House, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the crowd that rallied at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium:
We keep hearing from politicians that they’ve got to cut, cut, and cut. I want to ask you something, where did they ever get the nonsensical idea that you can cut our way out of the hole they put us in?
Destroying economic security and our fragile economic recovery is bad policy and is just plain wrong. Scapegoating teachers and other public workers is bad policy and it is flat ass wrong. Jeopardizing our children and America’s future by hacking up public education is bad policy and it is just wrong and it won’t go on in the state of Maryland.
Here’s more on the rally from Union City’s Chris Garlock:
Terry Jefferson, a 20-year special education teacher and member of AFSCME Maryland, which spearheaded the event with the Maryland State Education Association, said, “The way things are going; I don’t even know what my future looks like.”
Walker’s Bill Killing Bargaining Rights ‘Unconstitutional’
Milwaukee City Attorney Grant Langley says Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s bill, which includes taking away public employees’ bargaining rights, is unconstitutional because it would interfer with local autonomy.
This from the Milwaukee BizTimes:
In a letter to Milwaukee Alderman Joseph Dudzik, Langley stated, “… in our judgment, the courts would find the statue unconstitutional on three grounds: first, that it unconstitutionally interferes with and intrudes upon the city’s home-rule authority over its pension plan; second, that given certain vested rights or benefits that have accrued to employees currently in the plan, the statute would constitute an unconstitutional impairment of contract rights under the state and federal constitutions; and third, given these same vested rights or benefits, the proposed statute would violate the due process clauses of the state and federal constitutions because it would abrogate the terms and conditions of the Global Pension Settlement.
IAFF’s Schaitberger: ‘Scapegoating Workers Won’t Solve Anything’
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The attacks on firefighters and other public employees by state politicians like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) are “like a tsunami rolling across the country….The attacks have never been greater, more serious or so vicious,” says Fire Fighters (IAFF) President Harold Schaitberger.
Today the IAFF launched a campaign exposing lawmakers and others (see video) who are aggressively scapegoating firefighters and paramedics for state and city economic woes. Says Schaitberger in an In These Times column:
An increasing number of governors are joining New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s anti-worker chorus. Too bad they’re all off-key. Wall Street’s recklessness, not public employee pensions, caused our nation’s financial collapse. Scapegoating workers won’t solve anything. Read the rest of this entry »
