Right wing offers recipe for even worse wage gap

As our state continues to slowly recover from the Great Recession, many Nevada working families have one main goal: To make up lost economic ground and return their families to secure financial footing.

That priority doesn’t stand a chance if an anti-working family agenda being proposed in the 2015 Nevada legislative session beginning Monday is adopted. If passed into law, Nevada will join the ranks of Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana in rewarding Wall Street and big business at the expense of working families.

The targets here are Nevada’s public retirees and working families. What’s the motivation? In one word, greed. In Nevada and other states, billionaire financiers have made generous campaign contributions to politicians. Wall Street doesn’t invest in anything unless it expects generous returns. Wall Street spent at least $169 million in the last election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In a quick perusal of campaign finance reports, SEIU Nevada found hundreds of thousands of dollars of contributions to Nevada politicians from New York-based banks, financial services companies, hedge funds and private equity groups. All stand to gain if public pensions and workplace protections are weakened or eliminated.

Targeting Retirement Security

Banks and hedge funds want to do for public pensions what they did for the country’s mortgage industry. (They’ve already wormed their way into about one-quarter of the country’s $3 trillion in public pension funds, investigative website The // Intercept reported last year.)

The Nevada Public Employees Retirement System has been called “comprehensive, thoughtful and appropriate” and “best-in-class” by international benefits consulting firm Aon Hewitt. It provides the average Nevada PERS recipient about $31,000 annually, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security.

The Nevada Policy Research Institute wants to replace Nevada PERS with 401(k) accounts. If you work for a private company, you’re probably acquainted with 401(k)s. If so, how do you feel about your retirement prospects?

Some states already have made this switch — with disastrous results. According to the National Public Pension Coalition, Alaska’s pension debt has almost doubled — to $11.9 billion — since converting to a 401(k)-type plan. Michigan’s obligations soared, from $697 million in 1997 to $5.4 billion today. West Virginia’s transition took place in 1991, and by 2003, its pension system balance had plummeted so precariously low that the state opted to return to a traditional plan.

Legislatures in more than a dozen states have contemplated such a change and decided against it, according to the Keystone Research Center.

If they’re truly acting in the public interest, Nevada lawmakers will reach the same conclusion and maintain PERS.

Targeting the Working Class Path to the Middle Class

A second goal for NPRI is to eliminate or erode workplace rights provided to working families by labor unions. Since 2011, more than a dozen states have passed laws that have weakened or crippled unions, or eliminated other workplace protections, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. But the elimination of union protections doesn’t save governments a dime. Governors in states infamous for their anti-union campaigns — Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich — have publicly acknowledged that some provisions in their legislative assaults on workers didn’t save taxpayers any money.

Economic research has consistently shown that labor unions are the last, best economic protection offered to the American working class. As union membership has declined in the past three decades, the wage gap between the rich and working families soared. Today, the average CEO of a U.S. company is paid 350 times more than the average worker, according to Harvard Business School. Pay trends are also grim locally: The Wall Street Journal found in 2013 that Clark County residents were paid 5 percent less than we were 10 years earlier, when adjusted for inflation.

We regularly read and hear about wage inequality — the very real trend that a larger share of wealth is going to the very rich, while the working and middle class survive on stagnant or decreasing wages. Academic and think tank studies have concluded that the decline of organized labor is a significant contributor to our country’s growing income inequality.

For all of those reasons, it’s understandable why big corporations and the anti-working family lobby want to weaken or eliminate labor unions. They oppose us because we help level the playing field and provide a better life for the many, rather than generating more billions for the very few.

The Legislature’s Choice

State politicians will face a stark choice when they convene the 2015 Nevada Legislature on Monday: Will they align themselves with Wall Street billionaires and special interests, or will they stand with the state’s working families?

Here’s SEIU Nevada’s challenge to the Legislature, NPRI, the Review-Journal and other Nevada institutions: Rather than tearing each other down in “a race to the bottom” toward falling wages, eroding benefits and poverty retirement, why don’t we unite and chart a course that will offer a better life for all working Nevadans?

Martin Bassick is president of Service Employees International Union Nevada, which represents more than 17,000 workers in Southern and Northern Nevada.