You heard that right. Somehow SEIU President Andy Stern passed the vetting to be nominated for the National Commission on Fiscal Responsiblity and Reform, so-named so that it can be declared a success without actually reducing any deficits.
“I am honored to have been asked to serve on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and thank President Obama for ensuring that the voice of ordinary working Americans will be heard. “I have talked to thousands of our members, many low-wage workers, who have to make hard choices everyday to make ends meet, while never losing sight of their dreams — to provide a more prosperous future for their families.”
The Daily Caller hailed the move as par for the course for the Administration. Hot Air exclaimed that perhaps President Obama was getting tired on Stern and saw the commission as a perhaps opportunity to get him out of Obama’s hair. The Atlantic pointed out he’s not the only SEIU-er on a high level panel; SEIU’s Anna Burger sits on the Middle Class Task Force and the President’s Economic Recovery Board.
The Atlantic continues that “oddly enough” Stern opposed the commission when it was being considered in the Senate.
Maybe the difference is that the Senate commission possibly would have had some teeth. The labor-laced presidential commission on the deficit is practically guaranteed to have nothing of the sort. For Stern this means access to his favorite house (The White House) and clout. Stern likely will have little meaningful to say about deficit reduction–unless you count his own experience spending flagrant amounts of other people’s money, all while being millions in debt.
Today the Center for Union Facts expressed puzzlement and disbelief following the Washington Post report that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern may be nominated to President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
“Putting Andy Stern on a debt reduction commission is the equivalent of putting a tax cheat in charge of the Internal Revenue Service, but crazier things have happened in Washington” said J. Justin Wilson, Managing Director of the Center for Union Facts. “Stern and his unions know a thing or two about government debt, as they do their fair share to contribute to it. The SEIU has single-handedly driven more than a few states to the edge of fiscal insolvency. We can’t let him do the same to the rest of the country.”
The rumor that Stern will sit on the budget panel should not come as a surprise, given his long history of thwarting states’ attempts to balance their budgets. Stern’s SEIU, and other unions that represent state employees, have blocked many attempts to renegotiate state employees salaries and benefits.
For instance, as California struggles to avoid bankruptcy and close a $20 billion dollar budget deficit, unions including the SEIU have fought tooth and nail against any effort by legislators to save money. California also faces $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities in the next five years, but unions have vowed to reject any attempt to fix the pension crisis—and therefore any effort to address the state’s financial meltdown.
Equally entangled in their own budget crisis of unions’ making, New York State is working to close a $7.4 billion dollar deficit. Last month, Governor Paterson stated that the public sector unions were “thumb[ing] their nose at the public’s face.”
“Stern’s self-serving brand of ‘deficit reduction’ would likely increase taxes on everyone to pay for the pensions and wages of a few—without regard for our nation’s fiscal future,” Wilson continued.
Watching Governor Paterson try to fix New York State’s budget deficit is painful. Under extreme financial burdens, Paterson arrived in office with his hands already tied by financial guarantees. As he proposes ways to close the $7.5 billion budget gap, Paterson is becoming increasingly upset with public sector unions. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Reports:
“[Paterson] was less understanding toward public employee unions. “Some people act as if they’re not supposed to take any sacrifice at all,” he said. “There are those who are so self-absorbed … that they thumb their nose at the public’s face.” A representative from one of the state’s largest unions said when Paterson addresses the growing number of temporary employees in the state work force, it will talk about other issues. “The governor loses more and more credibility with us every day,” said Stephen Madarasz, director of communications for CSEA [Local 1000 AFSCME]“
Hopefully Gov. Paterson isn’t doing his job based on his “credibility” with unions. But the New York Times editorial reports that his relationship with the state’s unions is, unsurprisingly, complicated:
Mr. Paterson — who is eager to be re-elected — apparently made a deal with state workers’ unions that if they would agree to a less-costly pension plan for new employees, he would not let anyone go until next year. The new pension plan was needed, but Mayor Bloomberg is right that it is unfair for city workers to bear the burden now for Governor Paterson’s deal.
New York City is also billions of dollars in the hole–and Mayor Bloomberg is furious to say the least. Maybe he should take a long, heard look at the public sector unions. They are worth getting upset over.
Furloughs have been proposed for state workers in California in order to close the budget gap, but unions like the SEIU is adamant that furloughs do not actually save money. Workers have to make up undone work with overtime; they are completely ineffective, and then there is lost productivity, and…..the list continues. Let me repeat, the SEIU is adamant that furloughs don’t work….in California. Iowa is apparently a different case all together, where the local SEIU proposed furloughs to save money. From the Daily Nonpareil:
“Superintendent Martha Bruckner already has met with representatives of the three unions representing district employees – the Council Bluffs Education Association, the Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America. The SEIU proposed the furloughs to save jobs. If the district asked its employees to take five unpaid days off, the SEIU will agree. Dwain Pedersen, co-president of CBEA teachers’ union, said the CBEA will not agree. The CWA said it is open to discussion.”
“Most of the district’s administrators have agreed to the furloughs. If everyone agreed, Bruckner estimated the district could save about $1.3 million, and $1 million of that would be from CBEA employees. While unpaid furloughs and a wage freeze for 2010-11 still would not stop layoffs, “If we don’t get agreement on furloughs and wage freezes, there will be more cuts,” Bruckner said.”
In California, whether the SEIU is willing to face the music or not, their options are the same as Iowa’s: furloughs or layoffs (and paycuts). It’s funny, Michigan and Chicago implemented and accepted furloughs to close budget gaps. In Massachusetts, the SEIU was the first to approve furloughs. But in California, apparantly furloughs are ineffective?
Across the country, pension funds are in the red, especially union managed, owned, and operated pension funds. And in California, pensions for state and local workers are an enormous portion of local budgets and tax payer dollars.
The union-beleaguered mayor of San Francisco and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd are backing a proposal for San Francisco’s voters to decide whether they want to get the skyrocketing costs of pensions and health care under control.
San Francisco voters may soon have the opportunity to decide major changes to the city’s pension and retiree health care systems – both of which have seen their costs skyrocket as the city grapples with consecutive years of major budget deficits.
Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, with support from Mayor Gavin Newsom, will introduce a charter amendment at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting that would drastically reshape the city’s pension system. Ten years ago, the city paid $383.7 million to health insurance for active and retired workers, retirement contributions and Social Security. This year’s tab is $890 million, a 132 percent increase. In fiscal year 2013-14, the projected amount is $1.4 billion. Driving the rise is the overall increase in health care costs and the poor performance in investments during the economic downturn.
The key components of the measure would create a budget/fund set aside specifically for health benefits and pension, require new public service hires to contribute more to their own pension funds (a jump of 1.5 percentage points), remove pensions contributions percentages from contract negotiations, and recalculate how pensions are dolled out, namely averaging the three final years of pay, instead of relying on the final year of pay (which would cut back on spiking, a practice whereby employees receive one year pay jumps in their final year to set their pension much higher)
Further endearing Mayor Newsom to them, the SEIU caroled around town calling Newsom a Grinch. See the off-key video here, thanks to NBC.
What is the rallying cry, you ask?
Question: “Mayor Newsom is WHO?”
Answer: “The Grinch”
Not so much for San Francisco’s tax payers, who might have a chance this year to reign in how much of their salaries is going to pensions for others, and how much is going into the abyss of the city budget.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Teamsters on Thursday announced their support for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) amendment to eliminate the proposed excise tax on insurance plans from the Senate health care reform proposal. The 40 percent tax would be levied on family plans worth more than $23,000 and individual plans worth more than $8,500, starting in 2013. As those thresholds rise with inflation, more and more plans would be subject to the tax.
“Millions of working Americans will pay thousands of dollars more in taxes under the Senate’s proposal to finance health reform,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “Millions more will have their health benefits cut, even if they don’t belong to a union.” Nearly two-thirds of employers would cut health benefits rather than pay the excise tax, according to a recent study by Mercer Consulting. Another 23 percent would pass the cost of the tax on to employees. Seven percent would simply terminate their plans.
“The idea that this tax will curtail rising premiums is just dead wrong,” Hoffa said. “We much prefer the House plan, which would require the wealthiest Americans to pay back part of the tax cuts they have been given over the past decade.” Many plans are expensive because they cover workers in dangerous occupations, because they are in regions where insurers have near-monopoly power, or because they cover a group that’s older than the general population.”
And it wouldn’t be a compelling union press release if there wasn’t a story to drive home the point. Just saying:
“Gary Willett, a member of Teamsters Local 730, spoke against the tax at a news conference with Sen. Sanders. “The last thing middle-class working families need is to pay more taxes,” said Willett, who works in a Giant Food warehouse in Jessup, Md. “I’m working 50-60 hours a week of hard, physical labor, loading trucks in a warehouse. I’m paying income tax on 50-60 hour weeks. “When we negotiated our contract with Giant Food, we gave up part of a wage increase to maintain our health benefits at the same level.”
“My plan isn’t a Cadillac plan. I pay 20 percent of major medical charges and I have an annual deductible of $200. If this tax goes into effect, the cost of my plan will exceed the threshold in 2017. I expect my employer will pass that tax on to me or my benefits will be cut. That means I will either be paying $230 more in that first year than I’m already paying or my benefits will be reduced. I urge the Senate to tax those who can afford a Cadillac, not hard-working middle-class families.” [...]
We have written about Jimmy Hoffa and health care before, (like HERE) but this press release, to me, seems like his strongest statement yet. With a 40% excise tax on health care plans exceed a certain limit, who can blame him.
Many unions have pushed back on the health care bill because of the missing public option; others are upset because of the Cadillac tax on many union health plans. But Jimmy Hoffa still supports the plan. Despite no public option, and crippling taxes, he supports the health care reform plan. And not just any plan—the House version.
The health care bill bails out failing union pension funds to the tune of $10 billion, and the Teamsters pension funds are some of the worst of the worst, crippled by masses of closed trucking companies no longer contributing to the fund. Unions had something to do with this. Jimmy Hoffa wrote a pleading piece in The Detroit News on Wednesday bemoaning the “crisis in retirement security.” He says that critics “will complain about bailouts for unions.”
The specific part of the bill [H.R.3200 - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009] that bails out the Teamsters pension fund is under Title 1:[Protections and Standards for qualified health benefits], Subtitle B [Standards Guaranteeing Affordable Coverage]—SEC. 164. Reinsurance Program for Retirees. You can read it here on OpenCongress.
Have fun. It’s light reading. Here are some excerpts:
For funding percentages on the failing pension plans:
(2) PROGRAM PAYMENTS AND LIMIT- If the Secretary determines that a participating employment-based plan has submitted a valid claim under paragraph (1), the Secretary shall reimburse such plan for 80 percent of that portion of the costs attributable to such claim that exceeds $15,000, but is less than $90,000. Such amounts shall be adjusted each year based on the percentage increase in the medical care component of the Consumer Price Index (rounded to the nearest multiple of $1,000) for the year involved.
Total funding:
(B) FUNDING- There are hereby appropriated to the Trust Fund, out of any moneys in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, an amount requested by the Secretary as necessary to carry out this section, except that the total of all such amounts requested shall not exceed $10,000,000,000.
The subhead of the health care bill is:
To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.
The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, is the mayor of a large, liberal, and lovely city– a city that happens to have active, vociferous unions.
This is California, after all.
It just so happens that Mr. Newsom despises the local SEIU. And they him.
Here’s a round up of the increasingly nasty confrontations between Newsom and SEIU Local 1021, events triggered by his layoffs of 500 clerical workers and nursing assistants over the summer. The mayor’s office says the layoffs were due to the economic recession, and by all accounts, that is the case. San Francisco, just like every corner of California, is seriously strapped for cash.
A evening reception for a police chief was forced indoors thanks to screaming SEIU protestors outside. They held a die-in around his SUV in June. There is even a story about union members throwing ketchup at his wife during a pride parade in Jun, however SEIU Local organizer Robert Haaland let the Chronicle know that among all these activities, the ketchup incident was not SEIU. These were collected last week by a blogger.
On the 29th of September, a union member approached the Mayor with a flier stating he had reneged on a deal with the union. Newsom said it was a lie (which by all accounts it was), was furious, and said “I hate Robert” i.e. the organizer for the Local. Now the SEIU wants to file a complaint with the labor board of California for the incident, which will certainly endear them to Newsom even more. The next morning he arrived to work furious and said negotiations with the union had broken down.
Angry much? Newsom better get used to the attention from the SEIU. They have sworn to follow him wherever he goes. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Robert Haaland, an organizer for the union, said the gubernatorial candidate should get used to it. “We plan on dogging him on the campaign trail,” he said.
Even the Monday appearance in L.A. with former President Bill Clinton? “That’s the plan,” Haaland said.
As Mr. Newsom makes a bid for governor of the State, this fight becomes all the more interesting. Were he to be elected, he would probably feel entitled to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Governor Schwarzenegger, who takes great pleasure in burning the unions who have burned him. Perhaps the unions should find every possible gubernatorial candidate in the state and stage a die-in in front of their car. That will surely help the unions push their agenda through. Not.
LaborPains is a joint blog of the Center for Union Facts and the Employee Freedom Action Committee
Disclaimer: While no one is entitled to their own facts, they are
entitled to their own opinions. These opinions originate from their
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You heard that right. Somehow SEIU President Andy Stern passed the vetting to be nominated for the National Commission on Fiscal Responsiblity and Reform, so-named so that it can be declared a success without actually reducing any deficits.
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Across the country, pension funds are in the red, especially union managed, owned, and operated pension funds. And in California, pensions for state and local workers are an enormous portion of local budgets and tax payer dollars.
The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, is the mayor of a large, liberal, and lovely city– a city that happens to have active, vociferous unions.