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 »
Hard Enough to Live With Unemployment Insurance, Let Alone None
Terry Miale, a communications systems engineer, lost nearly everything when she lost her job.
My whole life is gone. My retirement is gone. My house is gone. For a period of time, I lost my mental health because I went into a deep depression.
Even though she worked 30 years in her field, it took Miale four years to get re-employed. So Miale can’t understand why Republican leaders in Congress just won’t extend unemployment insurance (UI) to long-term unemployed workers who can’t find jobs in an economy in which there are more than four workers for every one job.
When I needed unemployment benefits, they were there. I really think that it isn’t fair to pull a lifeline out from under people that are just now having to collect unemployment benefits. It’s hard enough to live on unemployment benefits, let alone live with none.
Unless UI is extended this month, 2 million jobless people will lose their lifeline. Those in Congress blocking the UI extension should be made to feel what it’s like to be unemployed.
Sign a petition to Congress demanding it act now to extend the emergency UI benefits program.
America the Vulnerable
The following is by John August, executive director of the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions. Read the full version of his column is at L&M Partnership.
The U.S. Census Bureau released new measures of poverty in November. According to the New York Times, “All told 100 million people – one in three Americans – either live in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.”
Or put another way:
“They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as just scrapping by.” (New York Times, November 19, 2011).
The new approach taken by the U.S. Census Bureau gives us a much more Read the rest of this entry »
Credit Card Debt? Wedding Planning? Labor College’s Online Tool Can Help
Zachary Teutsch in the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, announces the launch of a fantastic new resource for all of us to gain and improve our financial literacy.
Most schools don’t teach our kids about avoiding credit card debt. Most of us never had anyone take the time to teach us about the financial implications of a birth, a death, a wedding, a divorce, or retirement. This is because there isn’t much financial education in the United States and most of it is by salespeople who would like us to buy their products.
We know that union members around the country face tough financial issues and would like good, honest, fair information. The National Labor College and AFL-CIO have partnered to provide resources and answers at NLC InvestEd. You can download the NLC’s Investor Handbook, learn about mutual funds, balancing stocks and much more.
Some of the topics covered include:
- Buying A Home
- Children
- College
- Foreclosure
- Loss of a Loved One
- Paying Off Debt
- Retirement
- Weddings
Head over to NLC InvestEd and check it out.
As working people, our financial security is under threat and the AFL-CIO knows that having better information about financial issues is one more way we can push back. If you have questions about this new project, leave them as comments here.
Study: Half of Seniors at Risk for Poverty
 |
|
Here’s one big reason congressional Republicans and the deficit hawks are dead wrong about cutting Social Security benefits: According to a new study, nearly half (47.4 percent) of all Americans between the ages of 60 and 90 will experience at least one year of poverty or near poverty and seniors of color are twice as likely to be affected.
The study by Mark Rank, a professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, shows that 58 percent of seniors between 60 and 84 will, at some point, not have enough liquid assets to allow them to weather an unanticipated expense or downturn in income.
‘What Do We Want? JOBS’
Eleanor Arlook, Labor 2010 Florida field communications director, sends us this report.
“What do we want? JOBS! When do we want them? NOW!”
On a warm afternoon this week, chants from a group of protesters echoed through the sparsely filled plaza in front of the Orange County (Orlando, Fla.) court administration building. During the lunch hour, either not many people were taking lunches—or there were just not many people working. In the midst of a Jobs Emergency, it’s sadly likely the latter. Those who were in their offices heard the frustrated cries of “Justice” and “We Need Jobs NOW” creeping through the windows, bouncing through the halls as a nagging reminder that if change does not come now, their job may be next.
The Wednesday protest included Jobs With Justice, the Florida AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Florida Organized Now and the Florida Consumer Action Network, bringing attention to the jobs crisis affecting a record number of Floridians. With nearly 12 percent unemployment, the crisis here is real and immediate action is necessary. Activists participated yesterday in a “die-in” in Orlando as part of a national day of action demanding that politicians stop blocking real recovery. The die-in represented all of the dreams and jobs that have died due to this crisis that Wall Street created.
Target Wall Street Greed, Not Public Employees
 |
|
Too often when economic times get tough, scapegoats are found in the wrong places. Wall Street greed and double-dealing sparked much of the nation’s recent near-financial collapse, yet many in the chattering classes instead are attacking public employees for this rolling recession.
Economist Dean Baker puts the situation in perspective:
Fifteen million people are not out of work because of generous public employee pensions. Nor is this the reason that millions of homeowners are underwater in their mortgages and facing the loss of their home. In fact, if we cut all public employee pensions in half tomorrow, it would not create a single job or save anyone’s house. The reason that millions of people are suffering is a combination of Wall Street greed and incredible economic mismanagement.
Iowa Labor 2010: Grassroots Outreach Among Retired Americans
Michael Uehlein, Field Communications director for the Iowa Federation of Labor, sends us this report.
In Iowa today, the Alliance for Retired Americans is on the ground talking with seniors and Iowans about issues that affect retired older Americans. A proud union partner, the Alliance works for the security of working families heading into retirement.
The organization is focused on strengthening Social Security as a safety net for those who have paid into it and, in Iowa and around the nation, is a valuable partner to the labor movement and working families. The Alliance “has been a fantastic asset,” says Iowa AFL-CIO President Ken Sagar.
They’re working not simply for Americans who are currently retired, but for those who will be retired in the future.
Social Security Fearmongering
 |
|
When the report by the Social Security Board of Trustees came out last week, it found Social Security is strong for the long term. But that’s not what you’d hear from some corporate media outlets. Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) points out that CNN coverage has been especially egregious, with Wolf Blitzer asserting that Social Security has reached “the financial tipping point.”
Other CNN talking heads painted a similar dire picture. We know they have cushy retirement pensions—why do they want to kill retirement funding for the more than 64 percent of America’s retirees who depend upon Social Security as their sole source of income? FAIR is urging people to contact CNN’s Situation Room and tell them what we think about their coverage: situationroom@cnn.com.
WaPo Whopper on Trumka, Social Security and Taxes
Here’s a great way to save some Social Security money. Let more folks die before they can get a check. Cold? Maybe. But pretty darn effective according to Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.
Marcus seems to have taken offense at AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s objection to raising the retirement age and his call for the better-off among us to pay the Social Security tax on all their income, just like the rest of us do.
Trumka recently meet with the Post’s editorial board, including Marcus, and also testified last week before the federal budget deficit commission. In her WaPo column today, Marcus writes that Trumka “erupts” during the editorial board meeting when asked about raising the Social Security retirement age. She says he tells the board that would have been be a “death sentence” for workers like his late coal mining father whose 44 years in the mines left him with a case of black lung, but also a union pension check and Social Security. Read the rest of this entry »
