CSUEU E-News: October 6, 2011
Biweekly news digest from the California State University Employees Union
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BARGAINING TEAM ENDS THREE DAYS OF NEGOTIATIONS
INITIATIVES: BE WARY OF SIGNATURE GATHERERS
OCCUPY WALL STREET MOVEMENT
RETIREMENT HEIST: FORTUNE 500 RAIDS PENSION PLANS
SACRAMENTO BEE PUBLISHES TOP CSU SALARIES
NEW CENSUS DATA: UNIONS CREATE THE MIDDLE CLASS
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Bargaining Team Concludes Three Days of Intense Negotiations
In a bargaining update distributed earlier this afternoon, the CSUEU bargaining team reports on three days of intense contract negotiations held at the Cal Poly Pomona campus Monday through yesterday.
Their update details the team’s rejection of CSU’s proposal to change the contract to give campuses a blank check to raise parking fees. The team passed a revised salary proposal demanding a three percent across-the-board raise, and it zeroed in on the continuing failure of the university to fix the compensation system.
The next sessions are scheduled for the Long Beach campus on October 18-19 and the Dominguez Hills campus on October 20.
Ballot Initiatives: Be Wary of Signature Gatherers
The California Secretary of State’s office maintains this list of ballot measures for which signatures are now being gathered for next year’s election cycle. It's smart to be wary of signature-gatherers and to avoid signing anything that you don’t fully understand.
One proposed measure, called the Stop Special Interest Money Now Act, would cripple unions’ ability to collect and spend political action funds. It’s strikingly similar to former propositions 75 and 226, which were very costly to defeat.
Over the next two or three weeks, paid signature gatherers will haunt campuses, shopping malls, and other public places. Sponsors have until October 24 to gather the required hundreds of thousands of valid signatures per measure.
They’ll say just about anything to make their proposed ballot initiatives seem attractive. But, behind their seductive sales pitches are measures that can impact our right to bargain collectively and to have a decent pension, among other injustices. Here are just a few of the other initiatives in the works:
- The “End Public Sector Bargaining Act” would prohibit state and local public agencies from recognizing any labor union or other employee association as a bargaining agent of any public employee.
- The “Costa-Matteoli Pension Solvency Act” would put severe limits on public worker pensions.
- The “Raise Public Retirement Ages Act” increases the minimum retirement age to 65 for CalPERS members.
- The “Public Employee Pension Reform Act” would eliminate the authority to set public employee retirement benefits by contract or collective bargaining.
“These next few weeks will determine the early fates of these dangerous initiatives,” says CSUEU President Pat Gantt. “Be careful before signing any petitions. If you don’t have a full understanding of a particular initiative’s ramifications, it’s best not to sign at all.”
Occupy Wall Street Movement
The Occupy Wall Street movement, which began in New York City and has now spread to other major cities across the country, seems to have hit a nerve. In large part, the demonstrators are seeking the same things that unions have been fighting for, particularly since the start of the Great Recession: accountability for Wall Street and corporate America for the financial crisis and the growing economic inequality gap.
As is pointed out in this October 4 HuffingtonPost.com article authored by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senior Fellow Jared Bernstein, the share of income held by the top one percent before the downturn was 23.5 percent, the highest since 1928 and more than twice the 10 percent level of the late 1970s. The decade of the 2000s saw middle-incomes decline in real terms for working-age households, and the recession made those incomes fall even faster.
Read an October 5 CNN.com article detailing union endorsements of Occupy Wall Street.
Read SEIU’s October 5 “Statement to Americans Occupying Wall Street.”
Read an October 5 statement from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.
Retirement Heist: Top Companies Raided Their Pension Plans
A new book hot off the shelves is getting a lot of press in recent weeks. In Retirement Heist, Ellen Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, describes how executives and accountants at Fortune 500 companies legally looted pension plans of billions of dollars over the last couple of decades. No doubt this self-inflicted collapse of the private sector’s pension system has fueled current attacks on public worker retirement plans.
In a fascinating, in-depth Salon.com interview, Schultz explores the mechanisms used to gut corporate pension plans and, in many cases, subsequently to shut down those plans altogether.
As she puts it, “It took me a long time to find an expert who could explain to me how these accounting rules worked, but when I finally pieced it together, it was enormously simple.”
She adds, “Think of pensions as a debt. If a company can reverse a debt, it can record it as income. And that income is the same as if they got it from selling trucks or whatever it is the company sells. There were billions in promises to retirees for pensions, healthcare and death benefits, and life insurance, and the companies figured out that if they cut or eliminated them altogether then they could get those billions in profit--and even use them for executive compensation. A striking example was Lucent, which inherited about 100,000 retirees when it was spun off from AT&T. From the beginning, Lucent kept saying, ‘We are crippled by these retirees,’ but the truth is, they also received more than enough actual money from AT&T to pay every dime of benefits for all the current and future retirees. Bit by bit, they cannibalized these benefits.”
Sacramento Bee Publishes Top CSU Salaries
Have you ever wondered who in the CSU system received the largest salary? Last July, the Sacramento Bee published a list naming the 100 highest-paid CSU workers.
Here are the top 10 highest paid executives within the CSU, updated since the summer, including regular pay first, followed by total pay:
- Elliott Hirshman, San Diego, President $350,000 - $400,000
- Charles B Reed, Chancellor’s Office, Chancellor $396,740 - $399,788
- James M. Rosser, Los Angeles, President $305,909 - $372,484
- Robert A. Corrigan, San Francisco, President $281,200 - $358,144
- Alexander Gonzalez, Sacramento, President $277,671 - $352,719
- Rollin Charles Richmond, Humboldt, President $280,373 - $345,446
- Ruben Arminana, Sonoma, President $274,075 - $341,283
- Albert K. Karnig, San Bernardino, President $272,965 - $338,013
- Richard R. Rush, Channel Islands, President $258,846 - $333,894
- Horace Mitchell, Bakersfield, President $268,259 - $333,307
New Census Data: Unions Help Create a Middle-Class Society
The Center for American Progress Action Fund, a think tank dedicated to transforming progressive ideas into policy, has just published a thought-provoking analysis of new U.S. Census Bureau data showing the importance of unions to boosting incomes for all middle-class households—union and nonunion alike.
Titled “As Unions Weaken, So Does the Middle Class,” the article cites 2010 income data showing that strong unions are a critical factor in creating a middle-class society. Restoring the strength of unions would go a long way toward rebuilding the middle class.
Unions increase wages for their members as well as raise standards and therefore increase wages for nonmembers. They also ensure that workers are considered in corporate decision-making, and provide job training that help workers advance in their careers.
In fact, dollar for dollar, strengthening unions is just about as important to the middle class as boosting college graduation rates, according to the center’s recent study on the strength of the middle class in all 50 states.
The article’s conclusion: unions make the middle class stronger by giving it a bigger say in our economy and our political system.
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