San Francisco Mayor goes after pensions. Same old response from Labor heads: They're hurt.

 Gavin Newsom with Labor leaders John Sweeney and Tim Paulson

After last November's election, Andy Stern, President of SEIU and a dominant figure in the Change To Win Coalition was jubilant: "We just won an election. It's no secret.", he announced to the world. * SEIU spent some $60 million of his member's hard earned dues money to get Obama elected; organized Labor in general, about $400 million, plus help in kind.  And Obama has rewarded workers alright, spending $30 billion of our money to send 30,000 more youth to Afghanistan; that's $1,000,000 per person. And he got the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.  He is also dropping the public option for health care insurance and, well, there's EFCA that these officials were hanging their hats on.

You see, the “we” Stern refers to is not him and his members, or workers in general. It is that section of the capitalist class represented by the Democratic Party that the heads of organized Labor look to as their friends and allies.  This political marriage between the Democrats and the heads of organized Labor has gone on for years with catastrophic results for working people.  It is one of the main reasons so many workers don't bother to participate in the electoral process.  For Union members, their officials continue to push on them hostile forces that most of us rejected long ago; the Union leaders are responsible for the apathy and rejection of politics altogether by millions of working people.

Clinton did the same, screwed us on NAFTA, threw working class people off of welfare with their phony Welfare to Work program, many of them women with children. As he was doing that, Al Gore was boasting to business leaders about how aggressive the Clinton administration was in job elimination.  "In one year, we downsized by 100,000 employees. We have locked in place plans to eliminate another 200,000 workers. That's a bold start." he told Business Week.** Clinton himself told Wall Street back in 1992, "...People who work on Wall Street are good citizens who want their country to change...I want to generate a lot of millionaires..."  *** We can't say they didn't warn us.

For the heads of organized Labor, nothing has changed.  Despite the betrayals by the Democratic Party they cling to it like a Jack Russell Terrier to a old sock.  Gavin Newsom, the dashing millionaire mayor of San Francisco has been touted as Labor's friend too despite savaging public sector wages and benefits and publicly attacking Unions, particularly the nurses and the public sector. During the hotel lockout a few years ago, some of the more oppressed and low paid workers in town, Newsome commented that, “The hotels now have gotten their two weeks in after the two-week strike….fair is fair. As far as I’m concerned you’re even. Now let’s all grow up and get back to work.” “Let’s all grow up” This is a politician that the Labor leaders gave money to and expect their members to vote for.

Now Newsom is after public sector pensions.  Why not?  It's the next logical step after Delphi, GM, and the destruction of those in the private sector. San Francisco's pension cost have skyrocketed and "We have to do something about it." says Newsom. Plus, the employers have faced no real opposition form the heads of organized Labor so they feel very confident.

The mayor doesn't mention the bailout of the bankers as a solution. He doesn't mention the $33 billion in bonuses the 11 banks that received TARP money paid to their employees. He doesn't mention the Business Week report of June 6th 2008 that pointed out that traders and speculators made bets in the oil futures markets in 2007 totaling $8 trillion, that’s eight thousand billion dollars folks! up $1.7 trillion from 2005.

No!  What Newsom wants to do is require newly hired employees to pay more of the costs of their retirement.  Not only does this force workers to pay for the bankers' crisis, it divides workers, the new hires from those already employed, the older from the younger and public sector workers from the private and the rest of the population whose wages and benefits are not as generous.  It is carefully designed to divide the working class and turn us against one another making it all the more difficult to build an organized offensive against Newsom and his banker friends, just like two tier wage systems that Union leaders have meekly accepted.

And what does the head of the San Francisco Labor Council, Tim Paulson, have to say?  He tells the SF Chronicle that its "too soon to say how Unions would respond." "We are a little bit concerned that there is a proposal for pension reforms ...coming out without a consultation with the Labor Unions. " He says. ****

Paulson adds that they're talking about "our benefits" and different Union have different perspectives. We'll find out if we have common ground.

I don't know Tim Paulson, but if the standard is anything to go by, when paid Labor officials at the higher levels talk of "our" benefits or "our" pensions, this is a bit of a misnomer as their benefits and pensions are far more generous than the members they represent. And the cuts they recommend their members to accept rarely apply to them  Some officials draw double pensions (or did when I was active) and Local and international presidents earn millions of dollars a year in wages and expenses.

Tim Paulson is a "Little bit concerned" that they weren't consulted.  Perhaps he feels a bit like the average member feels.  He is upset with his Democratic ally that important officials like him weren't warned first, weren't "consulted" about the plan to savage working people's retirement. They could have made a deal.

Here Paulson has an opportunity in a mass meda outlet, a paper that many workers, including the effected workers read and this is all he has to say.  He doesn't mention the bailout either. He doesn't mention the cost of the wars and that we should get out of them. He doesn't mention taxing the rich or taxing stock trades or, in the case of California, taxing oil that is extracted from its land as it is the only state of the 22 oil producing states that doesn't do so. He displays no anger or disdain toward them.

Like all top Labor officials, Paulson doesn't want to say anything that might break the ties that bind him and the heads or organized Labor to the Democratic Party; where would they go? Earlier this year when members of SEIU local 1021, SF City workers, voted down a concessionary contract Paulson joined with SEIU leaders in publicly attacking Local 1021 members for being "confused". What contempt for working people.   They voted against a concessionary contract not because they wanted to fight against cuts but because they were "confused." 

And like all top paid officials, he is careful not to say anything that will arouse his members' interests, tap in to the tremendous anger that exists in society, bankers and the market itself.  An anger so pronounced that the US Chamber of Commerce decided against using the term "capitalism" in its campaign to counter the social hostility to capitalism that exists in the aftermath of the crash. The chamber found in its research that most people associated capitalism with the powerful dominating the weak.  Obama's phony public attacks on bankers this week is pandering to this public mood. He didn't attack them at the Democratic National Convention---they were there, had their parties, made their birbes, and paid for 80% of the convention's costs. He is "their" candidate.

For the Labor leadership, the only alternative open is to mobilize their members and the working class as a whole in a generalized offensive against the bankers, and their politicians.  This means a break from the Team Concept on the job and building a movement in the workplaces and the communities that demands and fights for what we need not what is acceptable to the employers and the Democratic Party. So it also means an end to the Team Concept in the political arena through the building of an independent party of the working class.  This is a necessity if we are to break the cycle of defeat and helplessness that has been strengthened by the Labor leadership's disastrous policies up to now.

This is not something they will do voluntarily.  Union opposition movements have to accept that to successfully drive back the employers offensive will mean a struggle with the Union bureaucracy; there is no way around it.

The recent student struggles in California and around the world are an inspiration to many workers and is an opportunity to link up workers, youth and community struggles.  The California student movement has issued a call for a strike (and where the forces are not present, a day of action) on March 4th 2010.  They have called for the heads of organized Labor to join them and use the resources and tremendous potential power of organized Labor to make it a successful strike for education, jobs, and for a better life for all.  Some Unions are taking up this call and the heads of organized Labor will not  do so without pressure form below.

You can download and distribute the call here and a resolution passed by the executive board of AFSCME Local 444 is here but will be voted on by the Local's membership on 12-17-09 and will be posted on this blog with letterhead after that vote assuming it passes. Get them in to the hands of your co-workers, on the lunch tables and get your Locals or Central Labor Bodies to endorse them.  Use them to organize for March 4th through discussions on the job aboiut their content, how we can win and why we have to.

* Wall Street Journal 12-06-08
** Getting Smaller With Al, Business Week, 1-23-95
 *** B.W. 3-23-92
**** SF Chronicle 12-15-09