Do public sector employees have a right to future benefits?

[Quantum Windbag]

Pensions are not ironclad in the private sector, why should they be in the public sector?

If you are part of the growing percentage of Americans who choose to live outside the state of California, you probably haven’t heard of Little Hoover. But this oversight agency is the closest the Golden State comes to gray eminence. Created in 1962, the commission makes measured and judicious suggestions on the governance of the state. The panel’s 13 members are chosen by a scrupulous process, described over four pages of the California code, that limits overt partisanship and emphasizes separation of powers. The commission’s judgments are generally considered as reliable as a Moffat & Company gold coin. So Little Hoover’s February report, Public Pensions for Retirement Security, came as a shock. Even the most far-reaching state governors have focused their plans for reduced pension benefits mostly on new hires. While a few (such as New Jersey’s Christie) have imposed later retirement dates, all have stayed within currently accepted legal practice for the ways existing government employees accrue retirement benefits. Broadly speaking, this means the reform proposals are confined to asking current workers to contribute more to their plans, not tampering with final payouts or accrual rates.
Little Hoover, by contrast, concludes that another two-tiered system—in which new hires come in with a less generous retirement package—will be inadequate. The report argues repeatedly that the state must find a way to pare back existing contracts. “The state and local governments need…to restructure future, unearned retirement benefits for their employees,” it states. “The Legislature must pass legislation giving this explicit authority to state and local government agencies.” The commission acknowledges that any such law “may entail the courts having to revisit prior court decisions.”
And where many Republicans—including Wisconsin’s Walker and California 2010 gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman—have made a point of excluding cops and firefighters from their pension reform plans, Little Hoover states: “Public safety pensions cannot be exempted from the discussion because of political inconvenience.”


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There is an interesting legal question about whether public-sector pension promises are truly binding. In private-sector work, you are entitled to retirement benefits that have already been accrued but not to future benefits that you may get if you stay in your job. A series of California court decisions has supported—without specifically protecting—future benefit gains for public employees. There actually is not a body of precedent for locking in future accrual rates. The 1978 California Supreme Court decision Betts v. Board of Administration suggests the opposite view, saying, “An employee’s vested contractual pension rights may be modified prior to retirement for the purpose of keeping a pension system flexible.”

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Maybe the truth hurts worst when it comes from one of your own. For all its highly praised independence, the Little Hoover Commission is a product of California’s political establishment, not a think tank full of anti-government ideologues. That its recommendations are in fact more radical than the plans proposed by avowed small-government types suggests how large the government employee pension problem is—and how unserious are most proposals to fix it.

Big Trouble in Little Hoover - Reason Magazine

 

[Nic_Driver]

Why should employers be allowed to change the terms of employment after the employee agreed to those terms?

The biggest reason is union labor is still alive in the public sector while the Republicans have all but finished unions in the public sector. The GOP is working on public sector unions but the public has had enough.

Unions have a contract, a legal document that lays out the terms of employment while private sector employees are nothing more than serfs these days.

Do you believe contracts to be binding or only when they serves the best interests of the master?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Why should employers be allowed to change the terms of employment after the employee agreed to those terms?

The biggest reason is union labor is still alive in the public sector while the Republicans have all but finished unions in the public sector. The GOP is working on public sector unions but the public has had enough.

Unions have a contract, a legal document that lays out the terms of employment while private sector employees are nothing more than serfs these days.

Do you believe contracts to be binding or only when they serves the best interests of the master?

Good point.

Employers should be prohibited by law from giving raises or more benefits because that is amending the contract after someone is hired.

By the way, thanks for proving you are so stupid you should not be allowed near a computer.

 

[eflatminor]

Why should employers be allowed to change the terms of employment after the employee agreed to those terms?

Uh, because the employer owns the business and there is nothing in an employment contract that says pensions are guaranteed? Let's turn your logic around for a moment. Why should employees be allowed to quit after the employer agreed to hire them? That work for you too?

Nobody's this stupid...

 

[whitehall]

Government workers have a right to anything they can negotiate just as the government has the right to challenge the negotiations. The concept is simple. The problem for the fat cat civil service unions is that Americans are getting wise and putting pressure on government to curb some of the lavish benefits. Every teacher who played hooky in Wisconsin order to (smoke a little dope?) play anti-establishment radical should have been fired. It's an indication of the quality (or lack of it) in today's union based education system.