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.”