Fighting For Real Retirement Security

Whenever the economy is in dire straits, pundits and demagogues start looking for scapegoats. An all-time favorite is the myth of public employees and their allegedly fat – yet underfunded – pensions.

The perverse spins goes something like this: "State pension plans are going broke, and only Wall Street can save us!" Or, "Defined benefit plans cost taxpayers too much. Everyone should have a 401(k)."

That makes for good demagoguery, but it ignores the facts, says AFSCME Director of Research Kerri Korpi:

“Our members have taken furloughs in a number of states, they’ve taken layoffs, wage freezes and cuts in pensions. When we’re talking about public employee pensions, let’s talk about facts. The average member of AFSCME makes a pension of about $20,000. That’s after a career of service contributing anywhere from 4% to 8% of their salary, year in and year out. A number of those folks don’t get Social Security, so that pension is all they’ve got in retirement.”

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley and others who push "defined contribution plans" or 401(k) savings accounts over real pension protection for working families want workers to take all the risk while Wall Street makes higher profits.

The reality is that dropping less costly pensions in favor of risky savings accounts does not make economic sense; it's just a smoke screen to demonize public service workers and the vital services they provide.

As Local 714 President Jay Bartolomei recently wrote in a letter to the editor published by the Hartford Courant:

Gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy discusses Connecticut's economic challenges with Council 4 union members.

"Our problem is not that public service workers have decent pensions in the form of defined benefit plans; it is that so many other employees do not. Manipulating the politics of ‘pension envy’ may fit the [media’s] anti-working class agenda, but it won’t solve the issue of declining revenues and the failure of elected leaders to keep up with their pension obligations."