Greenville News defends public employment penalties

Editors of the Greenville News praised today the legislature's move to raise public employees' required contributions to their retirement fund, calling it "not perfect" but "necessary."

Indeed, it's imperfect. It's also unnecessary, as lawmakers could have adopted -- could still amend themselves and adopt -- a host of alternative strategies, from raising sufficient revenue to address the state's obligations while holding public workers harmless, to restoring all of the positions that have been eliminated in recent years, which would infuse the retirement system with a wave of new contributions from new, potentially younger, employees.

Or, the legislature could have exempted all current employees from higher costs, but established higher contribution levels for all prospective employees.

Of course, lawmakers could have done something even more honorable and committed themselves to giving public employees decent wages and salaries.

This being South Carolina, I reckon it's too much to ask. We have corporate tax breaks to protect and private school vouchers to fund. It's a matter of priorities.

For the editors of the News, the priority is protection of the state's bond rating, not protection of public workers.

The fix is needed because the S.C. Retirement System fund faces an unfunded liability of at least $13 billion. That liability would double to $26 billion by 2041, according to a recent report in The State newspaper.

Such rapidly increasing liabilities would jeopardize pensions for workers who are depending on the state pension fund to maintain their standard of living in retirement.

The unfunded liability could have an impact on state taxpayers, too. If the state is unable to meet obligations to retirees -- or if it appears those obligations will go unmet -- South Carolina could lose its much-coveted AAA credit rating. That would lead to higher interest rates if and when the state borrows money, and those higher interest rates would lead to higher taxes for everyone in the state.

So when public employees -- many of whom qualify for and receive public assistance due to their low incomes -- pay this additional penalty for the privilege of being a public worker and hoping for a small pension in their retirement, they should feel good about it. After all, they're paying more so that the rest of us won't be bothered.

It's a great burden they carry, I'm sure, but that's why we have an institutionalized and permanent underclass in South Carolina -- to do the work of the wealthy, and to protect them from feeling any pain.

Say, is it still true that the tax on purchases of yachts is capped in South Carolina at $300? It's highway robbery; I don't see why the yacht-sales tax couldn't be cut in half, or eliminated altogether. But that's a note for another day.

These are not easy decisions. But poor decisions and the economic collapse of 2008 have put the state pension fund -- and pension funds in many states -- in a significant hole. That unfunded liability would have significant consequences if it was not fixed. For starters, state employees might not receive the benefits they have been promised. That needed to be addressed.

Great points, but let's pause for a moment on the reference to "poor decisions;" they deserve some attention, and not to be glossed over.

South Carolina has enjoyed some boom years recently, when times were so spectacularly good that we could afford to cut taxes here, cut taxes there, give corporate incentives to locate in our state, give a passel of new corporate tax breaks, and still achieve our highest priorities -- among them, to weaken public schools, cut public employment rolls, reduce public services, and make the poor suffer even worse.

Hey, what's good governance if we can't achieve our priorities?

I have to believe that if, among all that tax-cutting and tax-breaking and incentivizing during the good times, our lawmakers had also invested a teensy bit more in the state retirement system, we might not have wound up in a precarious position as we have. I learned about compound interest in the fifth grade, so it mustn't take much brain power to understand that a tiny increase in investment, when invested appropriately, yields great rewards over the long term.

Poor decisions, indeed, if our legislators didn't attend to their responsibilities year after year after year after year when they could have honored their obligations to the state's workers.

If this bill passes the Senate and is signed by the governor, lawmakers will have been successful in implementing reasonable changes that will preserve benefits for public employees and protect taxpayers from the potential default of the retirement fund. Of course, the state needs to continue watching the fund's performance, and it needs to ensure that further adjustments are not needed.

God forbid that additional adjustments will be needed. We'll have to re-institute poorhouses in which to lodge our public employees when they're evicted from their rental houses, and when their public assistance benefits finally expire.

Other states are facing the same situation as South Carolina and some of them have begun exploring a move toward the 401(k)-style retirement funds that many private-sector workers rely on.

Oh, that's a fine idea. Let's leave our public workers' retirement benefits at the mercy of the stock market and its corporate master, who have just proven since 2008 that they answer to no authority but themselves, and they respect nothing but their own profits.

If that's our best option, we might as well send letters to our public employees advising them to work until they die, as it's the only way to ensure a little income through that eventuality -- with an emphasis on little.

Editors of the News seem more than a little enamored of this notion:

Legislators should at least study such an idea to determine if it's a long-term option for the state's retirement fund. The recent changes, however, could buy some time to see if more dramatic changes would be needed.

After all, public employment is public service, and public service is about sacrifice. Who better to demonstrate sacrifice than our public employees?

It is not unreasonable to ask state employees to make some sacrifices to ensure their retirement remains stable rather than asking taxpayers, many of whom are seeing less stable benefits, to foot the entire bill.

Especially -- it goes without saying -- our wealthiest citizens, who struggle already with the exorbitant sales taxes on their mansions, acreages and yachts. Damn it all, the line must be drawn somewhere!

That's especially true in an era when private-sector workers are being asked to get by with less help from their employer for retirement because of wage cuts or freezes, frozen benefits, and change-overs to defined contribution retirement plans.

Let's not stop with that short list; by all means, let's add because of statutes that prevent private-sector workers from bargaining collectively with their employers.

If we're going to kick the proletariat in the teeth, make sure to get all the way to the ones in the back, the wisdom teeth. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

These changes are fair, sensible and deserve to be passed. Then lawmakers need to watch carefully to ensure the pension fund can stay on the path to solvency while continuing to provide promised benefits to the many retirees who will rely on this fund during their golden years.

Golden years.

One laughs to keep from crying.

Poll: Americans reject attacks on public employees' rights

Give average Americans an opportunity to demonstrate their humanity and intelligence, and they'll take it.

Bloomberg News Service conducted the poll and is reporting its findings, so no one can argue that this is a liberal-biased poll.

A new Bloomberg News national poll finds that Americans believe, by a wide margin, that public sector workers should have the right to collectively bargain. 64 percent of respondents, including a plurality of Republicans, believe public workers should be able to bargain collectively for their wages, while 63 percent believe that states should not be able to break pension agreements they’ve already made. This, of course, comes after a number of Republican governors used budget woes to justify removing collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Just as educators and other public workers are being assaulted from all sides, thanks to zombie legislation drafted by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council and being revivified in states from Maine to Louisiana -- including the voucher-and-tax-deduction bill right here in South Carolina -- ordinary Americans are saying they side with the nation's rank-and-file working class.

It's a powerful and moving piece of news.

As battles rage between state workers and Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio, 63 percent don’t think states should be able to break their promises to retirees, and respondents split over whether governors aim to balance their budgets or weaken unions that back Democratic foes, according to the poll conducted March 4-7.

The poll shows that political challenges to government workers are failing to draw broad support from a public more concerned about unemployment than government deficits.

Overreach. That's what Americans are calling the actions of a far-right movement that took advantage of bad economic times to storm state houses across the nation in 2010, and immediately set to work dismantling the social fabric that it took the entire twentieth century to weave.

“The Republican Party sees an opportunity to attack and possibly destroy the base of their opponents’ political power,” says poll respondent Dale Palmer, 59, a Democrat and retired teacher from Zephyrhills, Florida.

Palmer says budget deficits are a result of the economy and years of tax cuts, not the actions of public employees. “They’re putting it now on the backs of their enemies even when these particular unions are willing to bargain,” he says.

That's the influence of blind and aggressive ideology, not pragmatic governance.

And here's the kicker:

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed -- including a majority of Democrats and independents -- say corporations wield more political clout than unions. Public employees, meanwhile, are viewed favorably by a large majority: 72 percent, compared with 17 percent who have an unfavorable view.

Government employees account for the majority of union members in the U.S. as a result of the long decline in manufacturing industries. In 2010, 7.6 million of the 14.7 million U.S. union members worked in the public sector, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

Sixty-four percent of respondents, including a plurality of Republicans, say public employees should have the right to bargain collectively for their wages. Sixty-three percent, including 55 percent of Republicans, say states without enough money to pay for all the pension benefits they have promised to current retirees shouldn’t be able to break those obligations.

The awareness of the injustices being perpetrated on public employees is widespread and deep. Sixty-four percent of self-identified conservatives in America can't coalesce behind a single candidate for the United States presidency, yet that many of them agree that fair is fair, hard work deserves respect, far-right governors and legislators have misinterpreted their elections, and that corporations are the real power behind the damage being done to America. That's a powerful set of conclusions.

Randy Turner, a 32-year old construction worker from Springfield, Missouri, who participated in the poll, says he sees unions as a corrective force against a government that exerts enough power.

“Trying to make us not have a right for unions for anything is wrong,” says Turner, an independent voter who isn’t a union member. “They help our economy, they help the job market -- all kinds of things our government doesn’t help.”

The skirmishes have intensified support for unions among their members and Democrats, a potential challenge to Republicans in the 2012 elections, says Scott Keeter, a pollster with Pew Research Center in Washington.

“That fact might not change the outcome of the current battles, but could have implications for voter turnout among these groups next year,” he says.

Any chance this might lead governors like Nikki Haley to review their anti-worker positions and rhetoric? Probably not. Haley and others like her were elected largely because of their far-right supporters and blood-red messaging, and they'll be loathe to leave those hardline positions behind so quickly.

But the Bloomberg poll shows that they're not reflecting the views of most Americans.

A majority says unions are appropriate for firefighters, nurses, teachers, prison guards and police officers. Respondents were divided only over whether custodians and office workers also should be unionized.

Poll respondent Margaret Coakley, 72, a retired psychiatric social worker from New York who lives in New Harbor, Maine, says politicians are wrong if they blame public employees for the financial ills of their state.

“It’s outrageous they’re pointing to public employees now,” she says. “That’s not where the problems are.”