Many union pension funds are woefully underfunded, and big labor is looking at its friend in the White House is looking for a big bailout for them, as the Washington Times reports.
Nonunion workers and private companies could be forced into absorbing the financial liabilities of underfunded union pension plans, thanks to pending health care mandates and an executive order that could be finalized this year, policy analysts and trade group representatives have concluded.
Even as unions continue to market themselves to new members on the basis of generous pension programs, government figures show these plans are performing poorly in comparison with retirement packages that operate beyond the orbit of organized labor.
In addition, unions are pushing the Obama administration on project labor agreements (PLAs), which, among other things, will give their pension plans new sources of outside funding - nonunion workers on government contracts worth more than $25 million.
The average union pension has resources to cover only 62 percent of what is owed to participants, according to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. Pensions with less than 80 percent of the assets needed to cover present and projected liabilities are considered "endangered," while those that fall below a 65 percent threshold are classified as "critical" under the Pension Protection Act of 2006.
Project Labor Agreements are a tool unions and their government-enablers use to benefit organized labor. Just seven percent of private sector workers are members of a union.
The PLA pension scam works like this: Federal contracts can be awarded to non-union firms, but their employees will have to pay into these failing pension funds. Or the workers can join a union.
Besides card check, unions have other jokers from their deck of cards up their sleeves.
SEIU's Stern logged more White House visits than any other person in 2009.
Click here to learn more about PLAs.
How did these pensions get so messed up? True, the stock market woes of the last two years have hurt almost all pensions, but by law, 50 percent of the membership of a organized labor pension board must be staffed by union representatives.
Related posts:
Sneak attack: Obama likely to make recess appointment of radical Craig Becker to NLRB
Report from the bloggers' conference call on EFCA and under-funded pensions
Multi-employer pension blues
Technorati tags:
labor 
politics 
unions 
news 
organized labor 
card check 
efca 
pensions
No comments:
Post a Comment