OPINION:
The role the labor unions played in persuading Congress to allow unions to cut pension plans, which cover as many as 10 million American workers, for not only those still working, but also to retired workers living on pension income, is truly startling. These are the same unions that demanded that cities and companies in financial straits not make such cuts.
The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, which was passed just before Congress left town for Christmas, applies to the pension plans controlled by unions. Many have been underfunded for decades. These plans will lapse into insolvency in the not-so-distant future unless something is done to reform them. The unions oppose public pension reforms. Those who have spent working lifetimes paying into a system in return for a pledge that they could rely on for a comfortable retirement will pay the price of insolvency and the incompetence and mismanagement of the bosses. The unions that demanded that Social Security reform must not cut benefits because of current recipients have no qualms about cutting these benefits.
Facing a crisis of their own making, the unions went to Congress and cut a deal with both Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats who cry loudest when someone suggests cutting benefits for public employees or Social Security beneficiaries quickly agreed when the unions asked for permission to do what they had always said they could not and would not do, as a matter of principle. The Republicans, eager to show that they are good fellows, after all, and to avoid a federal bailout, went along with the betrayal.
Union leaders often live as high on the hog as many of the despised “one percenters,” and never consider scaling back their own lavish benefits. It’s more convenient to cut the retirement benefits of those who spent a lifetime paying into a pension plan the unions have mismanaged. Labor has spent $4 billion on candidates and trying to win elections from 2005 to 2011. The unions have consistently spent more than any other special interest group over election cycle after election cycle. This is their right, of course, but it is the right of their members to scream at the bosses who have used their pensions to buy the influence needed to pick their pockets. What happened to solidarity?
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