That’s between the union and the employer. If they negotiated the pension then good for them. It isn’t up to taxpayers to fund it.
It kind of is your responsibility because the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation guarantees pension payments.
"Unions" is a dog whistle. I can see why nonunion folks who don't get a fair share of the wealth in this country for their retirement are envious and reflexively attack unions. As is so often the case in America these days, the wrong boogeyman is attacked.
It’s not that simple. Who do you think pays for those pensions and salaries through higher manufacturing costs? Then who pays the bailouts when the crazy unrealistic projections needed to pay them don’t come to pass? GM and ford alone have 170 billion in pension obligations as of a few years ago, or 1 percent of GDP. People can rightfully argue that executive salaries are insanely high, but they are a drop in the bucket compared to numbers like that. You can also argue that corporate profits are too high on the priority list. But the problem with union agreements is that they aren’t flexible. So when the company doesn’t have a good year or two, the workers don’t have to share in the loss, but demand shares of the profits when times are good. The contracts go so far as to force plants to stay open for certain periods of time, even when the company’s needs may change in the timeframe of the contract. So they aren’t evil, but anachronistic and counter productive now in many cases. and then when you look at some of the insanity of public union pensions, those are even nuttier. Especially in places like California and Illinois.
Amtrak Joe is taking this country into yet another dark tunnel. But of course the Dems are happy since he just solidified the black lesbian vote with a failed prisoner exchange for the Merchant of Death (if he didn't already have the black lesbian vote with his token bimbo Press Secretary).
It's not about envy and boogeymen. Unions have certainly taken down entire industries in the U.S. What percentage of the appliances we buy in the U.S. are made in the U.S.? Almost none. They were made here, once upon a time. There is more than one reason that industries like that shipped out manufacturing overseas, but unions are one of the top reasons (along with taxes, regulations, and lawsuits). Why did Ford, GM, and Chrysler go looking for a bailout from Obama for their manufacturing operations with their entrenched unions, and Toyota, Kia, and others did not? Why are most of the auto manufacturing plants built in the last 25-30 years built in the Deep South, and not in Michigan and Ohio (where the car-making experience is)? It's because unions are optional in the South. (The Big Three cannot build a non-unionized plant in the South because their union contracts tell them they cannot do so.) And it's not random, either. There are specific things that unions do to weaken the company while strengthening the union. Unions will always fight cross-training, because it means that fewer workers may be needed if everyone is versatile enough to go where they are needed. (Fewer workers mean less dues for the union.) Unions will always fight communications between management and workers, unless it goes through the union. This allows them to control and adjust the narrative and put their own slant on things. This hurts product quality and drives up costs. (Toyota's Quality Circles has front line workers sitting down with engineers and managers every week to discuss problems and ways to fix them.) If you bought a GM car in the 2000's, you paid an extra $2500 for the privilege of having union members assemble a low-quality car for you. Before the collapse in 2008, workers could have full retirement at age 52, pay $21/month in retiree plus spouse "Cadillac" medical plans, and get laid off with pay based on seniority. There was a set of workers playing cards in the back room of the factory all day long just in case they were needed on the factory floor. If you paid that extra $2500, that is a part of what you were paying for. And it's why companies like Toyota have mopped the floor with companies like GM by making a better quality car for less money.
It's just extra foolishness, like bailing out college students who rack up debt. At some point, you get what you pay for, and if you pay for failure, you get more failure.
Is wealth equitably shared in America? Has income inequality increased since the demise of unions? If unions - or someone advocating for working folks - aren't the answer (and you make a strong case that they aren't) what is? We have a lot of angry and frustrated folks in America. I'm convinced it's because a few are eating most of the pie the working folks helped bake.
I don't know why you and a couple others only talk about the automobile industry. How much is Bezos, Musk, Tim Cook, the Wal-Mart and Publix families, to name just a few, worth? You seem to assume these large companies are just scraping by. BTW, we have a close acquaintance who is the sole owner of one small Ford dealership and part owner in 3 others. He pays his mechanics well, and is still filthy rich.
which is wrong. the gubmnt should not be in thebusiness of bailing out mismanaged retirement funds anymore than they should refund me for losses from my 401k US unions are counter productive to long term life of any company. I can agree with european models where unions are partners with the companies to help make them better and not adversarial to get as much as they can from the company. I once worked a trade show in Vegas where unions were in charge. In order to set up the booth, we had three different trades required just to set up a visual display, another two trades to set up the tables. Yes, two trades, three people to set up a set of simple collapsible tables that any 14-year-old kid could set up. For the display, we had one person with an apprentice to screw the display frame to the wall (install 4 screws into anchors built into the wall, one to plug the display into the electrical outlet (yes, charged 3 hours for a person to walk over and take the plug and plug it into the outlet in the floor), and 2 people to come hang the display on the frame. All of this would have taken me maybe 30 - 45 minutes to do. 4 people, 19 hours combined to do what I could do in less than an hour by myself. If someone unplugged the display at any time, it was another 3 hours to have someone come plug it back in and you were lucky to get them there within 3 - 4 hours of asking them to show up. If one of us plugged it in, we would be charged 2x (6 hours) and get a written warning from the show operator. how in the heck can anybody attempt to defend such waste? I worked a job in Pittsburgh building a golf course. each dewater pump had an "oiler". The oiler would watch the fuel guy fill the pump with diesel and then use a grease gun to grease the 4 or 5 spots that required greasing, took him maybe 15 minutes max. He would then spend the rest of the day in a chair nearby collecting his 8 hours until he would turn the pump off at quitting time. If we needed the pump to run all night to keep the water levels down so we could start to work firt thing in the am, the oiler got paid for 24 hour day after sitting in his chair in the shade for 8 hours. Multiply that by 6 - 8 pumps running when digging lakes and the costs were astronomical. If the oiler didn't show up that day, the dewater pump couldn't run unless you had the union send someone else out to sit in the chair. You could always tell which equipment operator wasn't coming in the next day because that piece of machine would be always parked in front of the diesel tank. If that machine moved so others could fuel up, that operator got paid for an 8 hour day even if the machine was just moved 50 feet so others could get to the fuel pump. If you needed that machine to run that day in order to try and keep on schedule, the replacement operator got paid his 8 hours and the assigned operator got his 8 hours too. As a foreman, I had to move around the site but as a non-union, special skills employee, I had to have a driver drive me around the site in my truck. I could go on, but the amount of waste built into the union contracts just drives up the price to produce anything. If the person responsible for emptying my trash didn't show up or missed my office, I would get in trouble if I simply emptied my own trash can. So much stupid chit I could go on about that all fell within the union "rules" Anybody that defends the unions of the US has never had to work with one to get something accomplished in an efficient manner or make a profit on a union job. They have went way beyond useful. Contrast that to european unions where their leaders work with the companies to improve training and efficiencies and run apprenticeship programs to train employees and to help increase profitability so the workers can profit instead of just forcing more employees to be hired to do less work. European unions typically see themselves as part of the company with a goal to make things better. US unions see the companies as the adversary that are to be bled as much as possible
Hmmmm. Union members who have a voice in the work place have better benefits than you, a non-union employee. Sooooo unfair to you. As a former union leader let me apologize for the five day work week, paid holidays, safer working conditions, better health care benefits, and wage equality that has burdened you so heavily. The pensions are insured by the federal government so they’re obligated to pay, and most of it is going to the right to earn less money red states. Welcome to Benefits.gov | Benefits.gov
One example of management kowtowed by excessive labor power and a relentless market Between 2014 and 2018, the CEO for Fort Lauderdale-based Universal Insurance Holdings made between $14 million and $25 million each year, corporate filings show. The company has reduced its policies in Florida over the last year. At St. Petersburg-based United Insurance Holdings, whose insurance arm fell under state supervision last week, the company awarded millions of dollars in stock dividends, most of which went to company officers and directors, even while its profits shrank, according to corporate filings. The payouts are legal under Florida law — and necessary, some say. While insurance companies in Florida are closely regulated, with caps on payouts and profits, their parent and sister companies are largely unregulated. Large payouts to executives were at the heart of the biggest insurer collapse in the state’s history: the 2008 failure of the Tampa-based Poe Insurance Group, which left Floridians on the hook paying roughly $850 million in outstanding claims from the 2004 and 2005 storms. The state sued to recoup $143.5 million in dividends the company paid to owners and their family members between 2004 and 2005. Since then, excessive payouts have been a consistent theme among the graveyard of companies that have failed. Financial autopsies on companies that went insolvent between 2011 and 2018 have repeatedly blamed high salaries and fees to affiliated companies. In one case, the autopsy said one insurer’s officers were “stripping (their) company of cash.” A lot more executive suffering detailed in the article but the four paragraph limit. Read if you dare. At least they’re not predatory Union retirees living on a pension No landfalls, big windfalls No landfalls, big windfalls - Tampa Bay Times For more great content like this subscribe to the Tampa Bay Times app here:
Doesn't surprise me that you were a union leader. The things you speak of were accomplished decades ago. The current versions of unions in the US are not sustainable for anyone except the gubmnt, ie taxpayers, as the inefficiency and extra costs put companies without quasi monopolies out of business .why should pensions be insured by the taxpayers? Should taxpayers insure my 401k? Why not if you think pensions should be insured?
A good book that I enjoyed reading - similar to a John McPhee book in that it delves into subject matter one might consider boring but does it in a compelling way.
I have a friend in Illinois state government. They do have problems with pension obligations. But they really get irritated when retirees move to Florida to avoid income taxes and basically hurt the Illinois state economy. In the great tradition of Americans going back to the Revolutionary War, they want governmental services but don't want to pay for them and then complain about the taxes and do whatever they can to avoid paying for what they received.
The taxpayers aren’t any more than they’re funding social security. The employees and businesses fund the retirement plan and the government insurers it.
Maybe they’re moving to Florida to enjoy the nice weather. Shoveling snow and driving on icy roads sucks.
