David vs Goliath

By Charley Wilkison, Director of Public Affairs

In fighting for your retirement it’s not just one giant we are up against, there are many Goliaths and they are all armed, protected and powerful. But just because the enemy is strong does not absolve us of our duty to stand and fight for what is right.

This legislative session we were faced with the decision to appease the politically powerful and hope for the best or take our five smooth stones and make a stand. Some labor organizations in Texas long ago perfected the fine art of punting off the side of their foot, running to the sidelines and hoping they can blend in on the bench of obscurity and maybe, just maybe they won’t be destroyed. It’s the same appeasement plan the French adopted with Hitler during WWII.

When it comes to the full blown attacks on your retirement running and screaming won’t make the nightmare end. Developing long, semi-intellectual white papers agreeing that the paradigm has shifted and looking for common ground with the enemies only gives the dragons more propaganda to spread. Somebody has to fight for the simplest of reasons, because it is the right thing to do.

The history of your war for a decent retirement

The well managed, conservatively funded and decent retirement plans that currently exist in Texas did not happen in a vacuum. No group of elected officials arose and benevolently bestowed these upon you. The smart people in the room began to listen to the representatives of the working people who pointed out that the taxpayers will never be able to pay a professional law enforcement agency what it is worth. Pro-business leaders pointed out that protecting business investments and the free flow of commerce can’t be accomplished with night watchmen and rent a cops. They needed real law enforcement officers with professional standards and the authority to act.

Knowing that commissioning a standing army of professional police officers in each town would be impossible for the taxpayers to fund the idea slowly developed of offering a carrot on the other end their service. This way a local government could recruit professional officers, lure them into a long term career that paid less than the private sector but with the incentive of a decent retirement on the far end of the equation. Now, the key here is that the officer would have to also invest in his/her retirement by both contributing financially and remaining on the force long enough to collect. So, in effect a strong employment agreement then existed between the officer who would face violence, stress, death and danger and the local government that desperately needed to provide public safety to its businesses and citizens. Without the citizens feeling safe, the businesses prospering, there could be no local tax revenue for the government.

Thus began the long tradition of a professional officer being willfully and gainfully trapped in a lengthy career of police service. It wasn’t a liberal’s fairy tale or a conservative’s moment of capitulation. Instead it was an old fashioned business deal wrapped in the trappings of honor sacrifice and protecting and serving.

Why THEY want to come and take it

Wall Street screwed up. They didn’t know how to make a big profit and leave a little on the table for the rest of the country, so they tried to take it all. The avarice and unbridled political power of crooks like Bernie Madoff and Jack Abramoff helped to temporarily break the country’s finances and cause a economic crisis.

Now, if they don’t change the argument soon and begin to blame the debt they helped create on someone else there could be a real change of direction in the country. Real reform, consumer and investor protections might be put in place. That would mean a return to sanity in the market as well as government. In fact, more private sector employees might begin demanding better pay and working conditions and a better RETIREMENT. That scares the other side so much that they have created a political movement. They have already influenced political thought and discourse in this country to a point that certain kinds of activists and their parrots in the news media are now openly blaming massive debt on working people. You or I never had it within our power to change the debt limit or start or end a war.  What has emerged from a Koch brothers-financed faux movement is a hatred of public workers and the few benefits they have earned.

If THEY don’t come and get your retirement then private sector employees may demand fair treatment and a decent income in their golden years. Entitlements is the term that wealthy politicians and their handlers have coined to describe the money they owe senior Americans that was deducted from their paychecks. The politicians have designed a plan to make regular Americans believe they are on welfare after paying into a government sponsored retirement for their entire lives. Sound familiar? Cities do it all the time. They regularly spend your retirement contribution on golf courses and then go to the public complaining that your retirement plan costs too much.

Now that the politicians of both parties have squandered the hard earned taxes on government giveaways to rich international corporations that have taken the jobs out of this country and helped to lure millions of illegal workers to this country in an effort to kill organized labor and cheapen the labor market—they help start a national bellyachers club to blame the working people. See, when private sector employees are paid less and are told daily that your retirement plan is rich, unearned and the cause of the national economic crisis—of course there will be hatred toward law enforcement officers and public workers.

If THEY win, Public Safety will suffer

Back in January a lobbyist got all up in my face in the Capitol dining room and said cities were tired of civil service, arbitration, pumped up police salaries caused by collective bargaining and tired of paying retirements –and this was the session it would all end. Thank goodness we were able to kill all those bills but they don’t really want what they are advocating.

If retirements and pensions go away police departments and law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to recruit a qualified pool of applicants and officers will be the rejects from Wal-Mart. College educated folks are not going to risk their lives to spend 25 years in a dangerous job for little pay if there is no decent retirement waiting on the other end.

Standards for hiring will have to be lowered to hire the unqualified and the under-qualified police cadets who will jump at the chance to actually wear a gun and badge. It will be a giant step backwards in policing. Professional standards will become a thing of the past.  When the public begins to interact with a less qualified police force and the politicians begin paying out lawsuits settlements for actions taken by those who are only a notch above the criminals they are arresting,  there will be hell to pay.

The Public is on our side

A poll we released this week shows over 68% of Texans who are likely to vote in the 2012 primaries believe a law enforcement officer’s retirement should be greater than worker’s in the private sector. Only 5 % think officers are overpaid and a majority of Texans don’t know you are paid less during your career as similarly trained and educated people in the private sector.

The poll was conducted by a Republican consultant group who represent both the Chair and Vice Chair of the House Committee on Public Safety as well as other Republican office holders and candidates in Texas and other states.

We intend to run other polls in the coming months and probe deeper in the attitudes of the public and test messages as well.

The Way Forward

I’m a true believer in the steady as she goes strategy. I’m a big fan of my hometown football coach who has a long term record of winning. He watches across the sideline while other coaches constantly change their strategy, lose patience and faith in their own game plan and create a herky-jerky, see-saw offense. He stays the course, makes minor adjustments and keeps winning.

We aren’t late to this war because we killed the first anti-retirement bill years ago. There are only two schools of thought on how to conduct this war. One is the popular appeasement theory. At a TMRS meeting years ago I listened in disbelief as two high ranking officials of another statewide union declared that officers should agree to a 401-K type plan because certain market forces were at work and the paradigm had shifted. There was no hope and law enforcement officers should be happy they had any retirement at all. That kind of surrender is wrong.

When we fight for you, we are laying down a line of fire for other generations to see. This war is so serious and so well financed and well managed on the other side that we have to take a long view of the issue and of history. We need to fight to change the climate and law enforcement unions across the country need to get outside the idea that they can simply have rallies and form old-school coalitions with other unions to fight this war. In fact, those 1970’s notions will no longer work. You absorb the shrillness of your weakest coalition member. You wind up fighting a war about someone else’s benefits. You are forced to defend worker’s benefits you don’t understand and that the public doesn’t see much value in. Law Enforcement officers have a unique niche. Your honor, courage and sacrifice makes your argument different.  Law enforcement must do what it always does and does best—be the first at the scene and hit the ground with our own message. If there is any joining to be done, it has to be others following us. The best we can do for others is lead.

After all, the old plan of following only one political party isn’t working for the other unions either. CLEAT was passing labor law in Texas when the trend was going the other way.  With the long arm of history judging us our job is to fight for your benefits now and regardless of the outcome be able to say that we did not capitulate but instead stood up and fought for the right thing.

It’s wrong to believe Democrats aren’t still relevant in this state. In fact, if they had not stayed with us during the worker’s comp fight we would have lost. It’s also not fair to believe that all Republicans or even all conservatives are opposed to you having a decent retirement.  Although some  Republicans voted against us in the House fight over the Worker’s Comp issue, we would not have won if we hadn’t pulled mainstream leaders with us.

CLEAT just finished a seminar in Fort Worth where we brought in the experts in the retirement/pension field to discuss everything from the overall national health of pensions as well as some of the fights across the nation. Although the enemies are strong and already doing the end zone dance this is no time for the faint of heart. This is Texas where even our liberals want the state to live within our means. Our pensions were developed by conservatives. They were funded carefully and remain well managed by legislators who generally aren’t joiners. Texas D’s and R’s are generally very suspicious of political power falling into the hands of the few.

CLEAT, it’s nearly 100 local unions and 18,000-plus members must remain united. The CLEAT Executive Board and the CLEAT Committee on Public Affairs has agreed that we are going to have a moratorium on endorsements and PAC contributions until we complete even more work in the field that includes additional polling and a forensic study of the redistricting maps.

In the end, this issue will be won not by union rallies or wearing matching hats and t-shirts on the steps of the Capitol. This war will be won by a sound strategy of building and using real solid political relationships. It is possible for Texas to stand and fight and turn the tide for you, your family and for future generations of Texas peace officers.