Central Labor Council News
As
members of the AFL-CIO
Dallas
Central Labor Council we were invited to last Tuesdays quarterly meeting
with the Mayor’s staff. Also in attendance were CLC President Jim
McCasland, Representatives from the Teamsters, Mr. Mike Buehler President of
the Dallas Firefighters Association, Mr. Kenneth Day
from the Dart Employees
Association and the Mayor’s Chief of Staff,
Crayton Webb.
Buehler
and I both addressed the problems with the change from 52 weeks to 13 weeks
of Salary Continuation for employees who are injured on the job.
Buehler, noted that there was no difference in the City’s
responsibility to an employee injured on the job regardless of whether they
are uniform or civilian. I
followed up with a listing of all the other daily job dangers that are faced
by our civilian employees. Webb noted that this is getting attention from
the council and might be revisited soon.
I
then questioned how a “pay for perform-ance” incentive program that is
being discussed by council would work. I pointed out that taxes,
insurance and costs go up for everyone, equally. And sliding scale
"performance or merit' raises. Discriminate and give smaller
percentages to employees who have spent several years in the same
position. We need an across the board Cost of Living increase.
I
requested information on what exactly they are considering a “consumer
directed” health plan, and pointed out the concerns of older employees who may
be unfairly targeted.
Also
requested was information on proposed Charter Reform Recommendations which
could eliminate city employees positions at the Council and the Mayors
office, replacing city employees with “at will” employees
answerable only to the Council and Mayor.
And finally addressed our concern over the 'pension study group' and
the setting aside of deals previously made with the employees and the Texas
Pension Review Board.
Buzz, Buzz, Buzz..
It
seems our friend Buzz from the Dallas Observer was recently flitting around
our little web site. Are we proud or what! J
Anyhow,
Patrick ‘Buzz’ Williams, called to let me know that he was going to razz
us over this months “My Parent” design. Maudlin, he called it, or was it
saccharin? Anyhow, he thought it overly dramatic and had a few questions.
Fair enough, let’s chat. J
I
told him it was a joke. A Californian named Splarka, who has no connection
to
Dallas
came up with the slogan for us. I assured him that no one was making any
money off the designs. And finally, explained that it was just a bit of
silliness to get us through these trying times.
We
then discussed current events as they relate to the city employees. You
know, stagnant pay, SIP reductions, RIFs, Privatization attempts, Benefit
cost increases, ect… I assured him that we were aware that the Mayor only
has one vote. And then we chatted about who is driving what agenda, and
comments made by elected officials about the civilian work force.
He warned me that he was still going to razz us, but admitted that we
needed a bit of cheering up, so perhaps he wouldn’t be too hard on us…
Or maybe he would. He IS cranky ya know. J
Council
member Dr. Maxine-Thornton-Reese has partnered with the new state of the art
What's Hot Fun world Roller Rink and Family Entertainment Center to offer
city employees (and immediate family) a night of free roller skating and fun
and every 3rd Monday from
6pm
to
9pm
.
You must bring your city I.D.
badge. Skate rental: $1.00
Location: What's Hot Fun World Roller Rink and
Family
Entertainment
Center
.
Phone
469-916-7528,
400
South Buckner Blvd.
,
Dallas
,
TX
Job Exportation increases hit close to home for one
of our own
Well
it is a sad week for the son of our Financial Secretary. This was his last
week working for eFunds in their ChexSystems division. The entire
Dallas
division along with all of our banking information was sent to
India
.
ChexSystems was in the business of gathering and compiling banking
information on everyone with a bank account. Their business was to enable
banks to easily check the previous bank history of people applying for new
accounts. Well was is not exactly correct, since they are still doing that,
but now they are shipping all of the information to another country. What a
comforting thought hey? Knowing that all of your personal information is
being gathered up and shipped overseas gives ya kind of a warm fuzzy
feeling…. Of course it could be heartburn and high bloodpressure, but it
is a warm feeling none the less.
They
will tell you that they are doing this to save us money. Really? Have costs
gone down, or have their profits just gone up? It is very doubtful that
eFunds is going to be passing the savings on to their customers, and if by
some miracle they did, does anyone think that this will mean a lower account
activation fee? And even if it did, in the long run how much does it profit
us to have our communities gutted of decent paying jobs? Where will our kids
work?
Local
offenders are SBC and Enpointe Computers, and some of the major players are
Microsoft, IBM and AT&T Wireless. Analysts predict as many as two
million
U.S.
white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications
designers will shift to low cost centers by 2014. They are reluctant to talk
about it for political reasons of course, and recently overseas data and
programming centers have stopped
crowing about each big new contract as part of the secrecy agreements with
their new customers.
We
were told when the manufacturing jobs were exported we could just retrain
for higher tech jobs. Oh really? Which higher tech jobs? The ones currently
being exported to
India
,
Canada
,
Scotland
and the like? Oh, we can get mid pay office jobs? Oh wait, those are being
exported too. Service sector or repair jobs? Hummm, well the pay is usually
sucky and there is a problem with finding customers to pay for our services.
After
all everyone else is out of work because their jobs have left the country.
But hey, as long as the companies are making a good profit that is all that
counts right?
If
a company wants to EXPORT our jobs overseas, they should be regulated and
taxed. We do that for lots of exports, why should this be any different?
If the companies want an American market, but want to use foreign
labor, they should have to pay an excise tax equal to the difference in
wages. This money could then be
put towards social services needed in the communities devastated by these
job exportations. It isn’t
protectionism, per say, since that applies to imported goods. This is merely
an export regulation. The
US
regulates lots of exports, so why not this very important one? We need to
tell our Senators and Congress people this. We need to make sure that they
get with the program and make this a priority.
Pension Opt-Out Defeated
Thanks
to a recommendation from the Governmental & Minority Affairs Committee,
City Council today declined to give the City Manager’s office any
direction that they wanted to vote on opt-ing out of Prop 15.
The
Committee members Thornton-Reese, Salazar,
Blaydes, Fantroy, Garcia, and Oakley unanimously voted to recommend
that the council not act on this provision. Which means that ‘earned’
pension benefits will be protected by state law and cannot be reduced in any
way.
Mr.
Rasansky voiced the opinion that it should be put to the voters. Even after
it was pointed out to him that over 75 percent of the
Dallas
voters voted for Prop 15, he still grumbled that it needed to be put to them
since they should have the opportunity to vote on the prop as it affected
the CITY. He did not look best
pleased when he was received by such silence and blank looks.
I
was very glad that Ms. Lill and Ms. Greyson took the lead of the discussion
in saying that they were not in favor of it. The support of those two, along
with the Six members from the Committee who unanimously recommended that
this law be allowed to go in to effect, pretty much ended the debate.
An Association member shares their views on the TMRS pension Fund
I
would like to respond to the recent “Pension Fund Review Committee News”
article in the union newsletter. The
Pension Review Committee’s statement that Texas Municipal Retirement
System (TMRS) was only for small departments could only have been made out
of total ignorance of the TMRS system. They
could not have done any research before making such a statement.
I don’t believe anyone could reasonably describe the City of
San Antonio
(a TMRS member) as a small city, especially since the most current census
data shows that
San Antonio
has a total population greater than
Dallas
.
TMRS investments totaled $10.6 billion
in 2003, yes, that’s billion with a “B”, and they paid out $443
million to retirees. I question
how much research was done before the latest committee decided that TMRS was
not capable of handling our city’s pension money.
I
contacted TMRS this week and asked specifically if TMRS had been contacted
by the City of
Dallas
or the Dallas Civilian Employees Retirement Fund (ERF), and if TMRS had been
contacted by either party, what information was given to them by TMRS.
TMRS Membership Development Manager David Rodriguez personally
responded to my request for this information saying “We have received
contact from various employees concerning a similar request such as yours
(just inquiries mainly). But we
have not really explored the possibility of bringing the entire city of
Dallas
into TMRS.” He went on to
explain that he would be “happy to be a participant and communicate the
TMRS system in detail” should I want to set up a meeting with the ERF or
the Pension Review Committee.
How
seriously is the Pension Review Committee considering any other pension fund
as an alternative, or is the city not about to let the civilian pension
money out of their grasp without a huge fight?
WHY? Is there some truth
to the rumors that the city uses the civilian retirement funds for other
purposes, perhaps as a means to patch holes in their problematic budgets?
Or as a means to repay the Federal Government for grant money that
was misused and/or mismanaged? What
other reasons could there be for their reluctance to fix the under-funding
problem with the civilian pension fund?
Why do they continue to waste more and more money to “study” the
problem? We all know that it
will not fix itself. The pension
fund is just like credit card debt, the longer you carry that balance, the
more indebted you become. The
pension fund is under-funded, and at some point in the future there won’t
be enough money to pay what the city owes to retired employees or future
retirees. Can any of us afford
to take the risk of not having a pension, particularly when, as City of
Dallas
employees, we have not been contributing to Social Security?
Many won’t even have the meager income that Social Security might
provide to fall back on.
As
a former employee of a TMRS member city, and with money still in their
system, I never realized how good I had it being with TMRS, until I was with
the City of
Dallas
.
Since I have money in both the
Dallas
pension plan and TMRS I feel that I can talk fairly about both my
impressions and experiences with TMRS as well as the ERF.
TMRS serves over 780 cities and 133,000 members, retirees, and
beneficiaries. Currently the ERF
claims that there are 7,588 contributing members, with 4,608 retirees or
beneficiaries for a total of 12,196 members.
The largest city in TMRS is
San Antonio
;
they have 6,478 contributing members.
San
Antonio
and
Dallas
seem to be close enough in size and pension plan numbers that I can’t
fathom why TMRS is not being seriously considered to replace the current
under-funded ERF.
As
for the claims that TMRS has a smaller pay out than the current
Dallas
pension system I will offer my own records as proof that what they are
telling us is wrong. The last
full year I contributed to TMRS I made $29,299 or $2,442 monthly.
If I had continued at that same salary until age 55, I would have
received a monthly retirement benefit of $4,222.
However, I left that city to come to work for
Dallas
.
I left my money in TMRS, and with 11.5 years of contributions in that
system, at age 60 I can collect $45,864 a year or $3,822 a month from TMRS
alone. If I had worked for
Dallas
for that 11.5 years earning the same salary, and left my money in the
pension fund at age 60 I could collect $9,266 a year or $772 a month.
Just in case anyone thinks this can’t be true, lets just say that I
worked for the city of
Dallas
for double the 11.5 years, so 23 years at the same salary while contributing
to the ERF pension fund, I would then be eligible to collect $18,532 a year
or $1,544 a month. The TMRS
benefit is more than quadruple the ERF benefit.
11.5
years TMRS
$3,822 a month in benefits
11.5
years ERF $
772 a month in benefits
23
years ERF
$1,544 a month in benefits
TMRS
has another positive going for it in my opinion.
Each individual has their OWN account, with their own funds deposited
in it, and the interest earned is deposited in each individual account
yearly.
You can access your account information at any time.
There
are clear explanations of the many different options you can choose from
through TMRS. All in all it is
much more clear and concise about what you have, what you can expect at
retirement, and what choices you can make when you do retire.
ERF
on the other hand is one lump fund. There
is no way for any of us to know that all the funds were deposited in the
pension plan. We have to trust
that the city does what they say they will.
Why should we be so trusting? After
all, this is the city that made a deal several years ago with the employees.
The city asked employees to increase our contributions into the
pension fund, and the city promised to increase their contribution as well.
However, they also promised to ask the
Dallas
residents to vote on the civilian retirement fund issue.
I quote from page 4 of the Retirement Fund election booklet handed
out in October/November of 1999 “Regardless of the outcome of the employee
vote, the City will be asking
Dallas
residents to vote by 2002 on changing the City ordinance that governs the
Fund.” Mayor Laura Miller was
on the City Council that passed this resolution.
After Laura Miller became Mayor, she then said that she should not
have her hands tied by something a past City Council did!
How can we trust anything the City tells us when our own Mayor
can’t keep the promise she made as a City Council person just because it
doesn’t suit her to do so as the Mayor?
The
ERF has been under-funded for at least 7 years that I am aware of.
I have no idea how long the city has known about the under-funding
problem, but they obviously knew about it before 1999 or the City Council
would not have passed a resolution to “correct the funding problem”.
The city has refused to address the problems with the ERF.
Instead, they have committees or panels or consultants “study”
the issue. The issue is clear;
the retirement fund does not have enough money in it for the long term.
Common sense would tell anyone that the longer we delay in getting
the pension fund problems fixed the deeper in the hole the fund gets.
If TMRS is really not a good fit for our city pension plan for
reasons not readily obvious to me, what other plans, if any, is the current
committee considering? The ERF,
in its current form with the City in control of who invests the money and
how it is invested, is not a viable option. – Pam L.
This
time something for the kiddies
There
is a ‘My Mommy Works for you’ and a ‘My Daddy works for you’
version. :D Crafty person at home? Download the graphic from our site and
make your own.
Front of Shirt
Back
of Shirt
http://www.employeeblues.com
Shirts,
mugs, clocks, mouse pads… gear for the ‘gruntled employee.
J
WHAT’S
YOUR OPINION?
