Funny guy. Arrows, as in a chess match, are the only moves that are available, otherwise it is like having a child at the table.

Comment:

City Observer: "Pre-funding the pension system is fiscally responsible"
City Observer: "We are all pro-labor here."

Randy: "If the employee benefits from a robust stock market why is that a problem?"
Randy: "I am very comfortable discussing or debating with anyone the wisdom of our city developing a biodiesel industry including the inclusion of biodiesel in all passenger diesel vehicle fuel outlets."

City Observer: "But didn't the actuaries say they'll get more?"

Hybrid plan?

"But that is not the case. SAIF offers its employees the PERS retirement plan, not a SAIF retirement plan or some sort of PERS hybrid. And, as we determined above, nothing in the PERS statutes indicates that the legislature intended to authorize public employers to set the terms of the PERS contract." . .. [paragraph] . . . "Accordingly, we reject the arguments of petitioner Dahlin and Whitty petitioners that the PERS contract includes terms outside the PERS statutes . . ."Strunk.

If the current retirement plan for the safety workers is terminated then there is no need whatsoever for a charter amendment to join PERS and to place ALL safety workers into PERS for ALL future work. Did the city need charter authority to place non-safety-workers into PERS? No. Indeed, as noted in Strunk, a hybrid plan would be inconsistent with current law.

Pro-labor?

There is a difference between support for a particular, presently recognized labor representative and support for labor generally and the freedom of laborers to select their representative. State labor law expressly prohibits government from favoring or opposing any labor organization, inclusive of efforts at "formation" of unions. The present lobbying ordinance, for example, is facially invalid to the extent that lobbying only by unions that are recognized are exempted while unions that would compete for representation are not exempted.

Randy: Will you let me post a flier, a union formation invitation, targeted to all the tier-3 employees, inclusive of anticipated future tier-3 safety workers, in each and every location where the particular "unions" that you now support can post their notices?
This is analogous to any claim that someone supports "business" generally merely by supporting/subsidizing one or more particular businesses. It is patently inconsistent, as the role of government as to business and labor alike is to assure fair play between and among them.

Randy (as to multiple pension tiers for future work): I would be happy to represent the bottom pension-tier folks as a distinct bargaining unit. I need cards from 30 percent of the members of a proposed bargaining unit as a precondition to seeking an ERB clarification of the bargaining unit, and a determination of the lack of a "community of interest." The city could unilaterally support these younger folks and their unique interests (divergent from the older workers) by inviting an unfair labor practice by unilaterally splitting the bargaining unit for recognition and bargaining, based on the differential pension interests. By not seeking such a split you are forsaking the younger/newer workers, and their rights to select their own representative or no representative at all other than a panel they themselves select.

Individual members of a bargaining unit that has members with an asserted superior right (as a description of a closed class of citizens) regarding pay going forward can themselves seek a final judicial determination of that higher status as to their earlier date of hire, as to pensions, and thereafter work under the newest pension scheme, whatever it may be. This is compatible with their right to select their own bargaining representative in the event of a split in the bargaining unit based on differential pension status. The mantra at the local level is that the state fully controls PERS, yet that does not prevent a class of folks with a supposed superior pension scheme, going forward for future work, from individually adopting the newer scheme. If each and every member can do so individually then one can only assume also that the class' bargaining agent could negotiate the same transition for all such members as a group from the superior pension scheme based on date of hire to the new scheme for new hires or those hired after August 29, 2003; and likewise the legal representative can argue the same in court. The legal representative of the bargaining unit must comply with the OSB's code of conduct, particularly with regard to conflicts of interest among their clients. It is an unequivocal violation of legal ethics as to conflicts of interest for the legal advocate for higher pension tier workers to simultaneously claim to also represent the rights of the newer-tiered workers, at least as to pensions. That is supposed to be a legal version of check and mate, an arrow that dictates that the only reasonable option is to have only one pension tier for all future work.

Suppose that you adopted a common pension scheme for all future work, the folks that wish to object can go to court just as with the OSPOA case and complain. That is the normal procedure to obtain a judicial remedy. Yet such a judicial action, post-Strunk, and in compliance the the judicial notion of finality, would today exclude any proscriptive court order as to any terms of pay for future work. It could include an order for an annuity stream to be paid in compensation for past work but not to start until the date an employee retires; even if the only pension reform were termination of the present plan. The features of any replacement pension are thus wholly irrelevant to such a final judicial order. It would be incompatible with your public duty and the state statutory demand that you remain neutral regarding employee choices for labor representation to presume some sort of prospective legal liability, where none can even be reasonably asserted today, specific to future work based on a pension plan that gets terminated or modified.

AFSCME obtained an award, in late 2004, of union dues directly from the employer (from public funds) rather than as a deduction from the pay of employees, as a discretionary "penalty" related to an unfair labor practice complaint. Imagine that I got a similar discretionary award from the ERB regarding my efforts to organize the lower-pension-tier folks within the City of Portland and the Portland Public Schools alike. Do the math. I could then sustain an organizing campaign and PR blitz, and even a legal barrage, from the proceeds for quite a long time. All this, ironically, in advance of having a single member in the organization.

And, there is not yet a single new-hire of a safety worker that is today subject to an inferior pension plan going forward. My position as to these new hires is no lesser and no greater than that of the present recognized labor organizations. These future potential members are not yet even in a position to have selected the current recognized labor organizations. That is, it is clearly within the realm of reason that you could proclaim today that the new hires, governed by a lower tier pension scheme, would be bargained with separately as a distinct bargaining unit.

Randy (as to the best interest of the present safety workers): In the words of Justice Balmer "Our respect for that precedent, however, should not be misread as an endorsement of either the result or the reasoning in [OSPOA]." He continues "the court in OSPOA proceeded to misconstrue the 'assumed interest rate' provision[.]" He then gets to a nugget that you are not in a position to offer, to offer in terms of prospective certainty of future payment based on past work, "[o]ur appropriate respect for stare decisis[;]" with a rewording for added emphasis and absolute clarity "OSPOA, however, ought not have any more vitality than that."

You are not a judge and cannot offer the protection of a final judicial action that would be spawned from a simple and clean termination of the present safety worker pension scheme. The best that you can offer is the prospect that you will exercise your duty to support state labor law in a manner that does not conform to neutrality but that arbitrarily favors a closed class of superior-pension-tier folks at the direct expense of new hires. This might be good for you to generate campaign dollars, but you and those campaign dollars would pale into insignificance were a court to rule in favor of the current safety workers who face a change in the pension scheme that has one and only one tier going forward for all future work. If there is any validity to any legal claim that the date of hire is a superior dividing line to that of bargained-for-pay for the term of a labor agreement then surely the court system will vindicate that claim.