Skip to main content

Public Pension Funds Used Against Workers

Why are union workers’ money enriching the rich? Public employees pension funds fund the destruction of not only the livelihoods of private sector workers, but also their own unions, which are, of course, the only reason union workers enjoy any benefits at all. The unions in search of higher returns, pension fund managers have taken to investing in what are known in the trades as “alternative” investments, such as hedge funds and private equity. They take union money and invest in companies that then do a so-called “efficiency” remodel to make the company make more money. This is just a code for screwing the workers by cutting wages, hours and even jobs. The purchasers borrow lots of money to buyout these heavily indebted companies, which forces management in an effort to achieve greater efficiency by cutting against the employees. What they did in the case of Safeway grocery stores is sold stores to nonunion operators, closing stores and squeezing labor. In all, 63,000 people lost their jobs. The human costs in doing business like this was suicide, alcoholism, heart attacks, bankruptcies, and broken families due to divorce. The money in union pensions is providing the cash to private equity firms, which puts union workers out of jobs when the equity firms buy the companies the union workers are employed by. They then layoff workers, slash pensions and healthcare for their own profit. Unions need to be careful in what and where they invest pension money in, otherwise the pension money managers are working against the very entity that employs them. It’s kind of like the old saying goes, investing in equity firms “is like chickens voting for Colonel Sanders.”

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time for an Offense

There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...

If Gompers Could Do It, We Can Do It

Labor must vote for the person who will support and vote for labor’s best interests. And in turn, labor members have to support those who are running for office who support labor unions and vote down ballots. Voting down ballot gives the person at the top more power to do what’s best for us. This includes elections for city, county and state positions, as well. If you think a four day work week is wishful thinking, remember workers had to fight for an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week. We, labor members and supporters, need to find people who can fight and win. We need to clean the Congress and Senate of the old Democratic guard who have voted repeatedly to hold the working class back while enriching themselves. This would rebuild solidarity in a magnitude greater than anything either party has seen or offered in the last fifty years. If we can bring about the change in the ruling class we can improve all of our lives. This would be the start of the end of the tyranny of the...

Shock Troops

Gerrymandering is the only legal form of voter theft. Workers, our long range plans should involve 1. crushing Citizens United; and 2. getting rid of the Electoral College. We have been trying to get rid of the electoral college since 1876, and we are still waiting for the revolt. Our unions need to start training some members to be our shock troops and if all unions would do this and work with our local Labor Councils, it would be a good start. Our members need to know our labor laws, local laws, and learn how to protest in the streets if necessary. The antiunion people like Trump, Musk and his billionaire friends work together to crush the working people and convince workers they’re doing them a favor and then use them as shock troops against unions and their workers. All union and nonunion working people must come together and work together to protect what we have now. Labor Councils have retired union members and they could work together to prepare to bring the movement forward....