Oregon Unions Face Attacks on Retirement From Republicans and Democrats Alike

As a Child Welfare worker in Oregon, I’ll occasionally talk with coworkers about retirement. Mostly we talk about how meager our PERS retirement will be and about how obsessed politicians are about it cutting it further (the average PERS pension is about $32,000 a year).
The PERS punching bag is decades old, and bipartisan. And although the upcoming election does pose different approaches to cutting PERS — with Knute Buehler more aggressive than Kate Brown — both want to attack the retirement of public employees.
Brown’s less lethal approach is still a violent attack: she has publicly supported retirement cuts via the language of “cost sharing”, which will specifically cut into a crucial piece of retirement savings called the 6% “pick up”.
The “pick up” is a monthly pension payment (6% of wages) that goes into a savings account for retirement. This 6% is crucial for newer state workers, who do not receive the “tier one” or “tier two” pensions that have long since been eliminated (most tier one workers have already retired, and younger workers look forward to a much more precarious retirement, if they get to retire at all.)
The only source of real stress on the PERS system is the so-called “unfunded liability”, which reared its head in response to the two corporate-caused recessions of the last 20 years, which ruined the investments that PERS money received returns on.
The PERS “problem” has been exacerbated by Oregon’s unwillingness to tax the wealthy and corporations. PERS has been blamed for draining the state budget, but the general fund has been anemic for years, due to ongoing tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations (most notably the infamous NIKE and Intel cuts), and the unwillingness of politicians to address the deep problems caused by the property tax-related ballot initiatives of the ‘90’s (measures 5 and 50).
PERS is blamed for cutting into the education budget, but school money also comes from the General Fund that gets drained by tax cuts, such as Kate Brown’s recent tax cuts to wealthy owners of “small businesses”.
For years Oregon corporations have seen profits soar, and developers and landlords have made massive profits off of Oregon’s housing crisis, which has driven up rents and home prices across the state.
Meanwhile, Oregon continues to cut services that have slashed the safety net, while creating shoddy roads and an education and Child Welfare system in perpetual crisis.
This austerity mindset has also driven down the living standards of Oregonians in general and public employees specifically, thousands of which are on food stamps.
Yes Oregon has a very serious problem, but it isn’t PERS.
Teachers across the country and just over the river in Washington are showing us the way to fight back against these bipartisan attacks. After years of cuts and disrespect, teachers are taking a stand with their communities against austerity as they demand higher wages and fully funded schools.
Oregon public employees should be paying close attention to the events up north, since adopting similar tactics will be necessary to stop the attacks on retirement, not to mention the endless attacks on health care and cuts that aim to drive down the standard of living for public employees.
Shamus Cooke works for the Oregon Department of Human Services and is a Chief Steward and Bargaining Delegate for SEIU 503. He can be reached at shamuscooke@gmail.com
