With a huge debt, San Francisco is looking for new ways to reduce their this without losing any jobs. Proposition B is a new measure headed by Jeff Adachi to have San Francisco city workers pay more into the retirement system and to pickup more health care costs for their dependents. Although this is completely reasonable, it has angered the labor unions, who don't want their cushy benefits packages touched. So the now standard response by labor unions is taking place – they’re using thug tactics to intimidate those in favor of Prop B and have filed a lawsuit to get it removed from this fall’s ballet.
The situation reminds us of the growing public resentment to government employees’ job security and fat benefits at a time when workers are suffering, as reported by The New York Times. The average San Francisco city workers’ salary is $93,000 and they can retire at 55 in some cases, and 62 in others with pensions of 75% to 90% of their final year’s salary. This is why union workers typically get big promotions right before they retire, so they can use that figure for their pensions. This is just another example of public sector employees getting paid almost double their private sector counterparts.
A group of labor unions filed a lawsuit to have Proposition B removed from this fall's election, even though over 77,000 people signed the petition. The lawsuit and associated smear campaign by the labor unions attempts to discredit each individual involved, along with the proposition itself. The unions released this statement to the press:
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