Mar 2010 Vol. 13 No. 3

Executive Officer's Forum

Making Tough Choices

Bob Alvarado, Executive Officer

en Espanol >


"I want to thank the thousands of members who took the time to attend one of our pension meetings to discuss this important
decision."

The pension votes have been counted and the results are in. Once again, carpenters have stepped up and taken action. While I wish we hadn’t faced this challenge, I’m proud to be part of a union that meets challenges head on, and consistently does the right thing.

While there will be other challenges, we have saved those aspects of our pension plan that make it most valuable for our industry.

The other thing that makes me proud is the level of membership participation & input in our union. More members participated in this decision than any vote in many years. The fact that our highest level of participation was combined with the highest approval rate of any vote we’ve taken shows we are clearly on the right track.

I also want to thank the thousands of members who took the time to attend one of our pension meetings to discuss this important decision. Time after time, I was struck by the insight and thoughtful questions we were asked. Many members got right to the heart of the issues we faced, just a few short minutes after being presented with the data we shared.

Part of our challenge came from the economic meltdown we’re still suffering through. Like many other institutions and individuals, we saw a lot of our assets suffer a sharp fall in value. But pension plans, ours included, faced a double impact, thanks to the misnamed ‘pension protection act’ passed under the last administration. As we reported at the pension meetings, efforts are underway to modify that legislation, and to give us more time to recover from the recent losses.

Right now, that legislation is stalled, and we’re not sure when it will move forward. But it does highlight the importance of politics, and its impact on our lives, and on our future. This year will be a busy season for politics, especially in California, and it is important to pay attention to who is running for office, and how these elections will impact our industry, our union, and our lives.

The most important race this year for us is the election of a new Governor for the State of California. Jerry Brown will be the Democratic nominee, and the Republicans are choosing between State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as their nominee. Both of them have taken very anti-union positions in this race. Whitman was recently the keynote speaker at the annual conference of the ABC, the notoriously anti-union contractors’ association. Poizner has called for another attack on our ability to even talk about politics.

Jerry Brown, on the other hand, has a good track record on labor issues. While he points out that public employee unions will have to share in solving the budget crisis, he has a long track record of standing up for working people. In his current role as Attorney General, he has aggressively gone after contractors that cheat their workers.

We’ll be making a recommendation in the Governor’s race, as well as the race of United States Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Just like the vote on the pension, it’s your vote, and your decision; we’ll do our best to provide you with facts about who will do the best for carpenters.

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