California State Workers Want to Retire With Dignity

On Wednesday, the California State-Assembly Conference Committee on Public Employee Pensions met at the City of Carson council chambers to discuss public pensions in advance of Governor Jerry Brown's proposal for reform.

As a member of Californians for Retirement Security, Jesus E. Hernandez urged the Committee to remember workers like him when considering pension fixes and reforms. Jesus has worked as a caterer and cook at the University of California, Riverside, for the past 12 years, and like most of California's public employees, he will depend on his meager but hard-earned pension as a main source of income when he retires.

Below is an excerpt of his op-ed printed this week in the Los Angeles Daily News, but we encourage you to read it in its entirety by clicking here.

The average public pension in California is $26,000 a year and mine will be far less -- some $1,600 a month. My employer promised me this benefit and I am holding up my end of the deal. I contribute to it with every single paycheck. This pension keeps me at a job with modest wages and long days, instead of seeking work in the private sector. It will help me afford health care and stay off public assistance when I retire at a time when new research shows half of Californians will retire in poverty.

I am concerned that I, and workers across all sectors of public service, have become the scapegoats of those who want to dismantle retirement security to win political capital. When state lawmakers come to Carson today for the first hearing of the newly created legislative Joint Public Employee Pension Committee, I ask that they keep in mind that most of us who would be harmed by hasty or ill-conceived pension "fixes" are not greedy public servants collecting fat pensions.

We are real people, earning a living, serving and protecting the people of California, and spending our paychecks and pensions in our local communities. We are police officers, scientists, teachers, firefighters, secretaries and cooks.

[...] What we ask of lawmakers who are about to undertake a comprehensive review of the pension system: Keep defined benefit plans intact instead of forcing us to gamble on Wall Street; preserve the collective bargaining rights built into the fabric of this nation's economy to protect workers; and give thoughtful consideration to the facts before plunging this state into changes that are likely in the end to cost taxpayers more and further damage our battered economy.

We ask to retire in dignity. All workers deserve that.

Update 10/28/11: On Thursday after this story was published, Governor Brown announced his proposals for California pension reform. You can read a response from SEIU Local 1000 and the California Association of Highway Patrolmen by clicking here.