Public Sector Pensions Investing in Hedge Funds

By Editor
10/31/2011
In less than five years California will have over 10 million residents who are over the age of 55 (ref. U.S. Census, California Demographics). If every one of these people were to receive a pension equivalent to what the average public employee in California can now expect after working full-time for no more than 30...

SEIU Members Challenge Leadership

By Dave Bego
10/31/2011
The SEIU’s Persuasion of Power appears to be wearing thin even within its own membership. Over the last several months, SEIU members have been asking questions about SEIU policies with respect to use of membership dues for politics, excessive executive compensation, member intimidation, misleading propaganda and election irregularities. A recent article, NLRB Quickie Election Fact Check,...

Union Watch Highlights

By Jack Dean
10/25/2011
President Obama and VP Biden Ignore Public Sector Hiring Boom By Steve Malanga, October 24, 2011, Public Sector Inc. The rhetoric has been heating up in Washington over additional stimulus for state and local government ever since the President’s latest jobs bill failed. The President suggested last week that parents were going to have to...

CTA Dons Victim Guise and Joins Occupy Wall Street Crowd

By Larry Sand
10/25/2011
It’s almost Halloween and the California Teachers Association, a rich and powerful outfit, is in costume as one of the “99%ers” – protesters who claim to be have-nots. A couple of weeks ago United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten made sympathetic statements about the Occupy Wall...

TAGS: American Federation of Teachers, California Teachers Association, class warfare, Dean Vogel, Dennis Van Roekel, National Education Association, Occupy Wall Street, Randi Weingarten, teachers unions

San Francisco Political Establishment Fights Pension Reform

By Steven Greenhut
10/24/2011
To outsiders, liberal San Francisco may seem preoccupied with leftist protesters occupying prime real estate in the Financial District or with debating proper restaurant etiquette for the city’s small but flagrant nudist population, or until recently, with arguing whether male circumcision should be outlawed. But the prospect of bankruptcy focuses the mind, even in a city so obsessed with leftist causes celebres....

End of Collective Bargaining in California?

By Mike Shedlock
10/20/2011
It is not often I side with economic professors. However, a proposal by Lanny Ebenstein to kill public union collective bargaining in California makes me stand up and salute. Please consider Benefit buster Lanny Ebenstein Lanny Ebenstein wants you to vote to kneecap the state’s public workers unions by banning their right to collective bargaining....

Union Watch Highlights

By Jack Dean
10/18/2011
Government Unions and Public Sector Compensation By Josh Rauh, October 16, 2011, Kellogg School of Finance Last week I attended an engrossing two-day conference hosted by the Searle Center at Northwestern Law School on Government Unions in the United States. Scholars from economics, finance, law, and political science presented their research on an number of...

Governor Brown Signs Last Minute Pro-Union Legislation

By Steven Greenhut
10/17/2011
As the legislative session came to an end, some Capitol observers expressed a glimmer of hope that Gov. Jerry Brown would be the independent, reform-minded governor that he swore he would be when he ran for office. After the governor argued that not every problem deserves a government solution — when he vetoed a Nanny-ish...

Breitbart Feels the SEIU’s Persuasion of Power

By Dave Bego
10/17/2011
BigGovernment.com founder Andrew Breitbart received another taste of SEIU thuggery this past week at “Occupy L.A.,” his second public run in with the SEIU thugs.  Mr. Breitbart’s first exposure was memorialized in Unholy Alliance?, The Devil at Breitbart’s Doorstep and SEIU’s Unholy Alliance. In that experience, Mr. Breitbart and Mr. Glenn Beck were confronted byReverend C.J. Hawkins,...