LaborPains.org

The State of California’s public pension system is in the red, has been in the red, and–under the current system–will remain in the red.  It’s just taken a while for people to admit it.

In 1999, the drastic expansion of California’s public pension employee benefits was driven by unions, workers, and government–under the naïve expectation of the constant growth of investments. Then the dot-com bubble burst in 2000. Then the stock market crashed last year.

CalPERS, California Public Employment Retirement System, estimates that this year alone, losses from the fund will be close to 30%, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s calls for action have been largely ignored, despite the fact that the fund is tens of billions of dollars underfunded.  But maybe change is on the horizon.

Last week when the chief actuary of CalPERS, Ron Seeling, admitted that the system is unsustainable, as reported in the Sacramento Bee:

I don’t want to sugar-coat anything. . . We are facing decades without significant turnarounds in assets, decades of—what I myself, my personal words, nobody else’s—unsustainable pension costs.

As the public comes around to the idea that something will have to change, California—the state with the most union members in the country—will have a fight on its hands.

Last week, after echoing that Schwarzenegger might have been onto something, an  LA Times editorial warned:

California deserves better than a fight between anti-government shouters branding public employees freeloaders and uncompromising union leaders ready to call out their troops to preserve the status quo.

But not all are ready to admit there is a problem.  SEIU officials still find a way to blame other root causes—more convenient root causes that don’t involve unions.

Capitol Weekly quotes Terry Brennand, Senior Government Relations Advocate for the SEIU-CA, as sharing the following pearl of wisdom last week regarding the underfunded state pension system: “I actually think it is sustainable.”  CW follows that Brennand think the basic problem is investment losses, not high benefit levels.

With wisdom like that, we can expect California’s pension system to stay right where it is– in the red.

(Photo courtesy of Medmoiselle T)

Russian nested doll (Matryoshka)

SEIU has been taking a lot of heat for their less-than-subtle organizing of “open” town halls across the country.  No one has been terribly confused about who is behind a health care town hall when those in attendance are all wearing bright purple shirts, sporting ACORN buttons, and carrying fancy signs—not to mention arriving on school buses.

Someone seems to have caught on.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, last Tuesday, local residents were treated to a kind welcome from a “local” group called the Kalamazoo Single Payer Across the Nation, a group that was helpful enough to put Kalamazoo in its name.  Let’s open up this matryoshka.

As the Kalamazoo Gazette reports:

It was advertised as a Kalamazoo town-hall meeting, sponsored by a new, local, all-volunteer group with a sole focus of advocating for a single-payer government plan for national health care.  But Michigan Citizen Action, a paid, Kalamazoo-based advocacy group with ties to national public-employee unions and a nationwide network of “progressive” interest groups, was an unadvertised presence Tuesday at the meeting at the downtown Kalamazoo Pubic Library. MCA’s participation was not disclosed by the official sponsor, Kalamazoo Single Payer Across the Nation, or by three paid MCA staff members who distributed literature and collected names from people who attended.

It gets even better:

Kudary [resident] said he declined to provide his name and contact information when he was shepherded into the Kalamazoo Public Library meeting room by a woman distributing “Health Care for American Now” stickers. Kudary said he recognized the logo from HCAN, a pro-national plan group directed by a number of U.S. labor unions, the progressive group MoveOn.org and USAction.  When a Kalamazoo Gazette reporter asked who was collecting the sign-up information, MCA was not mentioned. MCA’s Web site shows it is affiliated with HCAN and USAction. Chris Killian, spokesman for the 40-member Kalamazoo Single-Payer Across the Nation organization, said MCA “asked for an opportunity to join in the momentum” after KSPAN announced its forum.

A state level group, “joining the momentum” of a local group, associated with a national group, with a steering committee that includes the AFL-CIO, ACORN, UFCW, and the SEIU? After opening up all the dolls, the smallest one is still wearing a bright purple shirt.

Image courtesy of backpackphotography

Michael O’Brien at The Hill reports that this afternoon Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter flip-flopped (again), and said he’ll support the key vote to pass a modified version of card check.

Here’s the video:

The SEIU’s pervasive involvement in the health care townhalls can be surprising, if not downright shocking.  Just today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the AFL-CIO alone had contributed 15 million dollars to communications and mobilization.  Over 400 events have been blessed by the presence of SEIU members in the last month.  Andy Stern, SEIU’s president, has easily shared with the press that SEIU has been prepared for a “pivitol moment” since March.

But their fervor, tactics, and level of organization should frankly come as no surprise. This Wednesday, Michelle Malkin, in her piece took the opportunity to review the uncomfortable-to-read-about events, disturbing attitudes of leadership, and backhanded tactics that have been endemic to the SEIU in the last few years:

On SEIU leadership:

SEIU President Andy Stern, the militant social worker turned union heavy, boasts of his organizing philosophy: “(W)e prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work, we use the persuasion of power.”

On past SEIU incidents:

Last April, SEIU bussed in hundreds of Purple Shirts to a labor meeting in Detroit, where the union was battling a competitor over representation of nurses and health care workers in Ohio. The SEIU invaders ambushed the conference, sending one attendee to the hospital with a bloodied head and wounding several others. The competing union filed a restraining order against the SEIU. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney responded, “There is no justification — none — for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU.” California Nurses Association Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro condemned the violence: “There is an ugly pattern here of physical abuse and tactics of intimidation that have no place in either our labor movement or a civilized society.”

On SEIU’s despicable tactics:

SEIU and Stern’s shock troops have similarly bullied companies from private equity firms to Burger King to food management company Aramark to security provider Wackenhut Services, who have resisted SEIU’s attempts to organizer their workers. The Purple People have organized aggressive protests and a “War on Greed” campaign to pound the employers into submission. In Oakland, Stern and his Washington crew imposed a trusteeship on a 150,000-member local that had publicly opposed SEIU strong-arm tactics.

If only these incidents were one time occurrences, and out of character, not SEIU’s modus operandi. No surprise here.

Center for Union Facts Executive Director Rick Berman-—my boss and all around good guy—-has an OpEd in today’s Washington Times discussing EFCA’s binding arbitration provision.

Card check out, but binding arbitration stays

A group of six Democratic senators, led by Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, who recently “compromised” on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) are playing some version of three-card Monte. They announced scuttling the so-called card-check provision that would eliminate secret-ballot elections in workplaces. What they didn’t mention is that the card left on the table still imposes binding arbitration. It’s an absurd provision that puts unaccountable government-paid arbiters in charge of writing labor contracts for private businesses. Translation: An appointed outsider sets pay rates, benefit levels, promotion and discharge procedures as well as a host of other issues.

(more…)

Here’s a brief history lesson. In April, Bruce Raynor was suspended from his position as General President of Unite Here and accused of the following things in the press release signaling his removal:

” [B]ecause of his actions violating the Union’s Constitution. Actions have included trying to remove the International Union from control of the Amalgamated Bank, the Union’s pension and benefits funds, and the Union’s building in New York City, as well as fostering the illegal secession of joint boards from the Union.”

Thanks to his aforementioned relationships, Raynor found a soft place to land—as the SEIU Executive Vice-President, and brought along his Workers United colleagues.

Since his removal, UNITE HERE’s ire has only increased since April, culminating in a cathartic press release on August 10, 2009 entitled “Bruce Raynor’s Legacy:  The Mismanagement of Garment Workers’ Assets.” The release simply proclaims it is the “First in a Series,” underlining the bitterness behind it—and the fact we can expect more back stabbing that is endemic to union infighting.

The four page report expands on the apparent root causes of Bruce Raynor’s suspension and uses an apparently deserved, if slightly inordinate, amount of quotes in the first three lines:

SEIU recently released a report purporting to provide a “history lesson” regarding the assets of Unite Here. While Bruce Raynor now charges Unite Here with “laying claim” to union assets that rightfully “belong” to him, the historical record provides a far different story.

It then provides its own “history lesson,” outlining Raynor’s handling of The Amalgamated Bank of New York, his liquidation of International Ladies Garment Workers Union property, union raids, insolvent financial practices, and bribes, all occurring during his tenure at Unite Here.   We can now perhaps assume that since that he is gone, we can expect no such future practices from Unite Here, who were simply victims under his leadership.  But I doubt that is the lesson from history.

(Image courtesy of Kilgub)

The Memphis Commercial Appeal reports today that UPS’s completely “voluntary” letter-writing campaign violates lobbying disclosure laws if the financial cost of the campaign goes unreported by the company in their next quarterly disclosure report.

Which means that we won’t know until October 20th, when their next report is released, exactly what portion of the cost of mailing a package with UPS is being used in UPS’s rent seeking scheme against FedEx—-a cost that is apparently legally required to be reported in their L2 lobbying activity disclosure report.

But even if UPS discloses the cost in lost productivity and even if the campaign wasn’t actually voluntary, it is unlikely that there will be any serious consequences for UPS, according to Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, quoted in the article. There is “very little scrutiny, much less enforcement,” of the financial disclosure in these cases.

We may just never know how much it has already cost us, but if UPS succeeds in pulling FedEx down to their level, it will definitely cost us more.

For the August 6 Healthcare Town Hall Forum in Stamford, CT, featuring Congressman Jim Hines, SEIU members were warned via a memo of “opponents of reform” and were encouraged to “come out in strong numbers to drown out their voices.”

Notwithstanding that last week Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer emphatically argued that “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. “Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades.”

A hat tip goes to Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard for some splendid sleuthing. In her blog, Ham identified the glaring discrepancy between what Nancy Pelosi considers American and what SEIU considers par for the course, and she provided a screen shot of the original memo, taken yesterday. What a difference a day will make.

This morning apparently, SEIU would like last week’s attendees to change their actions ex post facto. The updated memo for last week’s event now retroactively provides the following guidance: SEIU members should “come out in strong numbers to counter their voices.”

I don’t think last week’s event attendees will get this memo, but I am interested to see what “counter their voices” looks like—or rather—sounds like.