Coal miner pension

In the news today is a story about retired coal miners who are losing their promised health care benefits. This is happening across the county, not only to health care but to pensions as well. Illinois is a case in point with both their public employee plan and the teacher retirement plan. When the state threatened to reduce benefits union leaders pointed out that the state constitution forbids any reduction in legacy benefits, (benefits for retirees). The state went to the federal government for help and in 2014 a new law was passed which allowed pension managers to override the state constitution and now these retirees benefits are in jeopardy. These unions, which includes cities, counties and states negotiated in good faith and now after many years the agreements are being changed. How did this happen! In the Minneapolis School District there are 3,300 teachers and 6,700 support staff. 1,500 of the support staff are members of the teachers union. If the teachers select a candidate who will negotiate contracts that are favorable to teachers and then work to get them elected, they have a very good chance of winning. If each teacher and spouse vote for a particular candidate that is 9000 votes. Now if they get their parents to vote that is another 18,000. Next if they have coffee parties and invite the neighbors plus make a small campaign contribution they can just about guarantee a win for their candidate. The winners usually get 60,000 votes. The proof of this is that No DFL-endorsed candidate for the board has lost in at least 20 years. This union followed the rules and their candidates won and then they sat down across the table to negotiate with the people they just helped get elected and promised they would get them re-elected. The school board said they did not have a lot of money to offer but they could increase the legacy benefits and the teachers agreed. Many years later when it came time to pay the piper the money was not there. This was the reason why a strong liberal like FDR warned against public unions. This happened across the country with city workers, county worker, state workers, teachers and even federal workers under civil service.