The clamor over public worker pensions could come to a head during 2012.

Schemes to undermine and/or change pensions such as those provided through CalPERS are being promoted by critics of public employees in the context of growing insecurity regarding retirement for vast numbers of Americans.

Unfortunately, rather than improve retirement security for everyone, the goal of most proposals is to destroy retirement programs for middle-class public workers, including CSU faculty, and eventually to privatize public sector pension plans for the benefit of Wall Street.

AFSCME leader Lee Saunders explained in an opinion article in the San Francisco Chronicle this week that, in fact, there really isn’t a need to “fix” CalPERS because it’s working fine.

Saunders explains, “Over the past 20 years, CalPERS has earned an average annual investment return of 8.4 percent, which is more than the fund needs to ensure it can pay long-term benefits” and that the fund has recovered from the 2008 downturn.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/02/EDQN1MIA0B.DTL

Learn more about CalPERS on the fund’s own web site at “Myth Versus Fact: Pension Reform.” http://www.calpersresponds.com/all-myths-vs-facts.php