Endangered Species: Workers with Pensions

A Nearly Extinct Animal

Employees with pensions are not quite dinosaurs yet, we are probably more in the category of the spotted owl. Our rapidly diminishing group now consists almost entirely of unionized public sector employees, working people who earned all kinds of benefits for simply doing their jobs over a long period of time and then, obligingly, getting old.

I think of my pension as an inheritance of sorts, a kind of consolation prize when friends talk about their windfalls from dead relatives. It may not be much, but it arrives each month without any effort on my part allowing me to sit and my computer and feel like a paid writer.

Sunday, I was chatting with a realtor at a Berkeley street fair who appeared to be around my age. Her reaction to my obvious delight at being retired was one I have encountered often. It involves an enthusiastic proclamation of job love coupled with a desire to work until reaching death's door. I have no reason not to believe her. I know Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court feels this way as well. Republicans and some Democrats have even kicked around raising the retirement age so folks can enjoy their jobs well into their dotage. 

But many working-class folks have stressful, demeaning jobs that, as the body ages, wring the very life and spirit from them. It is not a blessing to be forced to perform this type of work until 70 years of age. Part of the conundrum professors and doctors, lawyers and CEOs face is that the simple fact of admitting that work is a moderately unpleasant chore for the majority of workers underlines a hard truth of capitalism:  in order for some people to excel at fulfilling and meaningful work, many others have to service them and their needs. They used to need to make the goods as well but this is less of an issue now that the manufacturing industry is drying up.

I am extremely grateful that I snagged one of the last working-class gems of a bygone era but also very depressed that the welfare of the generations behind me will be left up to chance. Those with prudent and frugal relatives or prominent families may have something to fall back on. But regular working people's options are being sharply reigned in by feeding frenzy of plutocratic capitalism. 

The Things We Do For Work

We're seeing some victories but mostly we're being creamed. Yes, a judge in Wisconsin declared Scott Walkers' attack and railroading through of an anti-worker, anti-union proposal unconstitutional. And folks are pushing back against the Ryan plan to eliminate Medicare. This is helping some Democrats in Republican districts, Kathy Hochul, NY in particular, get elected.

The creamed part has led us to sweeping anti-worker legislation ushered in under the misnomer of "pension reform," forcing public sector employees to pay for the financial meltdown with meager paychecks as financial inequality increases the rich make more money and pay less taxes than ever.

Which brings me to the topic, The Things We Do For Work, which tend to be as desperate and drastic as The Things We Do For Love, but with a more limited result...like paddling against the current in a river just to stay in the same place and not be swept backwards, downstream.

My sister is in a situation where she is vulnerable to being swept downstream in a civil service job related to Social Services in a large Bay Area County that shall remain nameless. She was accepted for promotion to a higher level job and wound up with an anal, newly hired manager, twenty years her junior who is trying to ramp up her hard-ass boss lady title at my sister's expense. She wrote up a three month review for my sister that, although only about one quarter "needs improvement" said at the end is no uncertain terms that she may not pass her probationary period and keep her job.

Now my sister has worked, as a union-protected employee, for over five years in this county. In other words she is "vested." But there is a catch in a new probationary period. You don't necessarily get bounced back to your old job and can conceivably wind up on the street. All for the sin of taking a risk and accepting a promotion. What does this mean if it exposes you to job vulnerability that you didn't have before? It's all very scary and let's just say she is swimming as fast as she can, submitting rebuttals and getting everything in writing.

A friend of hers has another horror story of work probation in another Social Services job at the county level. Hers ends at five months before her probationary period ended. She was just simply informed that she didn't get the job and should just leave, no explanation, nada. She believes it was over a difference of opinion but will never know for sure. She wound up going back to another job that had accepted her previously but she'd turned down. They took her on at $10,000 less salary per year than was offered during her first interview. She took the job at the reduced rate even though it's a couple of hours away and requires her to rent a room during her work week and drive back for weekends. Both huge additional expenses not to mention inconveniences.

So, these are the kind of things we do for work in this so-called economic recovery as the public sector is decimated and all these new jobs that are being created seem to be at McDonald's and Starbucks for eight to ten dollars an hour. Welcome to the New Economy!

San Jose Mayor Declares Financial Martial Law

King Chuck

San Jose City Council has voted 8-3, after a three-hour afternoon meeting, to set up a June 21 hearing in which the council will vote on formally declaring a "fiscal state of emergency'" and deciding which budget slashing measures might be taken to voters in November.

This comes in response to the Mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed's draconian proposal to layoff employees, cut city services and make whatever changes he deems necessary to the existing contracts of public sector workers.

Reed, (a Democrat and former Air Force Officer), is following in the shady, despicable footsteps of governors Scott Walker (R, WI), Rick Snyder (R, MI), Paul LePage (R, ME), John Kasich (R, OH) and Rick Scott (R, FL), but instead of simply tampering with collective bargaining rights and the rights of democratically elected officials to govern, Reed has taken things a step further to justify the wholesale elimination of jobs and bargaining rights as well as the dismantling of crucial services.

According to California State Law: "a local emergency means conditions of disaster or extreme peril to the safety of people and property, which are likely to be beyond the control of the services, personnel, equipment or facilities of a city or county."

Demonstrating another example of rampant Disaster Capitalism, Reed, who asserts that public employees have no "vested rights" and intends to cut the number of city employees from 4,200 to 1,600. His plan entails creating a mostly volunteer police and fire department, closing all community centers and all libraries except for one, curtailing health benefits freezing pension pay increases for current employees and eliminating them for future workers.  

The War on Workers Escalates

The Streets of Madison

Wisconsin has declared war on public sector employees, more specifically on their unions. The voracious Republican beast won't be satisfied until we are all homeless and out on the streets. Scott Walker has become the Hosni Mubarak of Wisconsin leading the call to arms, trying to mobilize private and public sectors workers against each other.
He is even trying divide and conquer from within by offering to exempt police and firefighters (often the highest paid group) from his draconian proposals.

 This battle has been fermenting quite a while. In the last election the people of San Francisco defeated, by a large margin, proposition B, a proposal by public defender Jeff Adachi to charge workers more for health care and cut into the benefits of the most underpaid.

The Streets of Cairo

In Wisconsin Walker is trying to eliminate collective bargaining, the raison d'etre for unions, completely. Fortunately, the people of Wisconsin are fighting back. With 30,000 in the streets yesterday, Madison is beginning to look, not quite Cairo, but definitely a bit like Bahrain.Instead of pulling down everyone to the lowest possible level, we should be struggling to improve the quality of all our lives.