Experts Expound

Brown’s public pension plan cuts existing benefits and sets up a “hybrid” system to include a 401(k) component. Is the love affair between labor and Brown over, this time for good?

The love affair may be waning, but they remain friends with benefits.  Gov. Brown is not above flirting, granting labor a sweet nothing by moving the paycheck protection initiative to the November ballot. Besides, labor has nowhere else to go.

Naw, just like a long term, but healthy marriage … the sparks that fly aren’t always just of passion, but they have a time-honored partnership and must react to a world that doesn’t stand still. Just as kids grow and leave the house, the public pension systems have also grown. Each needs to become self-supporting. Jerry is the daddy. I feel like a philosopher prince today.  

It was always more of a “friends with benefits” kind of thing anyway.

You just need to look at Modesto and San Francisco to see how the public feels about public employee pensions.  Brown needs to deal with this issue.

I don’t think there ever was a love affair.  Labor unions – and I have been a member of three for 42 years – better wake up and smell the coffee.  As evidenced by Measure C’s passage in SF last night, the time has come to participate in workable solutions rather than dragging heels and whining.  Gov. Brown is knowledgeable, pragmatic and determined to get the California economy back on track.  A big chunk of that is unfunded mandates in the Pension Funds.  Likely initiatives on the November ballot would be far more onerous and the governor has five appointments opening on the STRS board.  The time is right to work together with this governor and help craft solutions that are fair to all parties.  

There was never really a love affair. Brown just was, and still is, a far superior alternative to “I’ll make 40,000 people unemployed immediately.”

Jerry Brown and Big Labor has always been a loveless marriage of convenience; two hopelessly addicted & dysfunctional barflies who dislike each other intensely but also depend on each other for their continued survival.

Who are they going to vote for, eMeg?

Brown is offering new definitions of everything, including friendship with allies, some of whom have become a little soft in their thinking since pliant members have made it so easy so long.

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