Public Workers Under Attack
This has been a difficult year for government workers across the country, who are fighting uphill battles to hang on to their pensions and stable salaries — and it’s not over yet.
Turning Our Backs on Unions
Noah includes himself as one of those liberals “who spent too much time beating up unions,” as he told me recently. (He and I are both members of the informal Washington Monthly alumni society.) His thinking began to change in the early 1990s when he read “Which Side Are You On?” It is a powerful meditation on the difficulties unions face, written by Thomas Geoghegan, a Chicago labor lawyer. Researching “The Great Divergence” reinforced Noah’s growing view that when liberals turned their backs on unions — when they put, in his words, “identity politics over economic justice” — they made a terrible mistake.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/opinion/nocera-turning-our-backs-on-unions.html?src=me&ref=general
BPSA Survey Link
BPSA Survey Link
Bristol: Flush pension fund; Leaders worried
The city’s financial advisor, John Beirne, who has guided the Retirement Board’s choices all along, said these “are difficult times” and figuring out where to make money is tougher than ever.
Comparing Wealth in Retirement: State-Local Versus Private Sector Workers
Introduction
The compensation of public employees is a hot topic in the wake of the financial crisis. Funded levels of public pension plans declined sharply at the same time that state and local revenues collapsed. As a result, plan sponsors in most states are looking for ways to reduce pension costs. The assumption – either explicit or implied – is that pensions are too generous. Pensions, of course, are just one part of compensation, so any comparison must also consider wages and other benefits. The question of comparability of compensation in the state-local and private sectors was the focus of a recent Issue in Brief. The conclusion was that wages for workers with similar characteristics, education, and experience were higher in the private sector than the public, but benefits for state-local workers roughly offset the wage penalty. Taken as a whole, compensation in the two sectors is roughly comparable...
State doesn't wait for overdue union efficiency ideas
The administration reported that the deal ratified by unions on Aug. 18 would save $700 million this year and $900 million in 2012-13 through a wage freeze, a new employee wellness program, retirements, pension and other benefit restrictions, and three labor-management efficiency panels.