The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU’s plan, called “the Retirement USA Initiative.”
| American labor union pension plans are broke, victims of malfeasance, corruption and negligent mismanagement. Now, union bosses want to hijack the private sector’s retirement plans and 401K plans to cover their own incompetence. |
Claiming that the retirement system in place now has “failed most Americans,” EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey, told a labor union publication that “account balances have fallen by a third since late 2007, leaving many older workers unable to retire just as our economy is shedding millions of jobs.”
| One of the nation’s largest labor unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is promoting a plan that will centralize all retirement plans for American workers, including private 401(k) plans, under one new “retirement system” for the United States. |
“The failure is broad and deep. It’s not just a few people falling through the cracks: most of us already are in the ravine. Three in 10 have only a 401(k) or similar savings plan, and the rest of us are totally out of luck,” said Eisenbrey.
| The president of SEIU is Andy Stern, a critical player in the election of Barack Obama. Van Helsing at Moonbattery pointed out in November Stern is also the most frequent visitor to the White House. |
The Washington Times has a special report from Kevin Mooney today delving in to this issue in greater depth:
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.
Demographics are at least partially responsible for the collapse of pension assets within unionized plans, according to labor analysts. Private-sector union membership has fallen from about 20 percent in 1980 to 7.6 percent in 2008 and 7.2 percent in 2009, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. For the first time in U.S. history, a majority of union members work for the government rather than in the private sector.
| The fallback position for union leaders who need an influx of members to sustain underfunded pension plans is to push for policy changes that would coerce workers and companies into joining organized labor, Ms. Furchtgott-Roth said. |
“In countries where there is a single-payer health care plan, you find that the doctors, nurses and health aides are all government workers, and this is always a source of new union membership,” she said. “If more Americans have health insurance, the demand for health care expands, as does employment in the health care field.”
| Hat/Tip > Lone Star Times |
The Washington Times; for more reading.
It serves always to distract the public councils and feeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves with in their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
…George Washington’s Farewell Address…
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