Cross-posted at DailyKOS, Union Review and Democratic Underground

The New York METRO Communicators is bringing us a discussion on the pension crisis this Monday night.

The End Of Retirement With Dignity
What workers need to know

A discussion with:

Teresa Ghilarducci, author of When I'm Sixty-Four: The Plot against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them. After having taught economics for twenty-five years at the University of Notre Dame, now holds the Irene and Bernard L. Schwartz Chair of Economic Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research. She is also the 2006-2008 Wurf Fellow at Harvard Law School. Her other books include Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Private Pensions.

There will also be commentary by:

Stuart Leibowitz, Chair of Alliance for Retired Americans, AFL-CIO; President of the New York City Chapter of Retirees Association of District Council 37

Mel Aaronson, Treasurer of the United Federation of Teachers; UFT representative to Teachers' Retirement System board

Refreshments, Light Meal and a book signing by Teresa Ghilarducci to follow

Monday, November 17, 6:15-8:00pm
United Federation of Teachers
52 Broadway in Manhattan
Classroom F, 19th Floor

<--Click for Printable leaflet on left

Brought to you by the METRO Labor Communications Council, the New york branch of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA)

This is a huge win for Federal workers.

From: ILCA- The International Labor communications Association

FEDERAL WORKERS UNIONS VS. BUSH: ‘WE WON. THEY LOST. GAME OVER.’
By Mark Gruenberg PAI Staff Writer

Washington- Federal worker unions racked up two big wins against anti-worker GOP President George W.Bush after his regime, on Feb. 18, gave up its long-running attempt to impose new anti-worker personnel rules on the 135,000 employees at the Department of Homeland Security--and when Congress earlier dumped his similar scheme for 700,000 Defense Department workers.

The wins put paid to what AFGE General Counsel Mark Roth called “the Heritage Foundation agenda” to denigrate federal workers and to destroy worker protections. Of Bush’s plan, adopted from the Right Wing think tank’s treatises, Roth said: “We won. They lost. Game over.”

The federal worker union wins are important for all workers because AFGE President John Gage previously said that if Bush won at the two big federal agencies, he would try to extend the anti-worker personnel rules to other federal agencies, then state and local government workers and then to the private sector. In both DOD and the Homeland Security Department, theBush rules stripped workers of union rights, whistleblower protections, pay based on objective standards, and appeal rights, among other things. Pay and promotions would have been decided by presidential political appointees, and appeals of discipline rulings against DOD workers would have gone to a stacked board appointed by the Defense Secretary.

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