Transit Workers, Trade Unionists & Students Protest Anti-Labor SPUR

Photos of protest
SF Speculator and billionaire Michael Moritz demands that SF city workers take pension cuts and pay more for healthcare. The SF Chronicle who refused to cover the rally at SPUR print his propaganda. Him and his fellow speculators are directly responsible for the economic meltdown yet they want public workers to pay.

SF Billionaire Defends Attacks On City Workers
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/15/EDFI1FSPC4.DTL
Proposition B makes sense for San Francisco

Michael Moritz

Friday, October 15, 2010
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I have been accused of wanting to destroy working families, been labeled a "speculator billionaire," had my face plastered on unflattering placards and watched several hundred protesters yell abuse outside my home.

This has happened because of my support for Proposition B - the November ballot initiative sponsored by Public Defender Jeff Adachi - that would make adjustments to the pension and benefits plans for San Francisco city employees.

I came to support Adachi's efforts for a simple reason: I thought it made great sense for San Francisco.

Our city has become like a drowning credit-card holder, and the evidence is all around us. Budget cuts - in everything but the pension and benefits of city employees - are eating away at the fabric of San Francisco. Ten thousand students were deprived of summer school this year. Drug rehab programs and after-school programs for kids have been eliminated or butchered. The city is begging private donors to help maintain the parks. Potholes just get deeper. Street cleaning has been curtailed.

Meantime, fees are being raised everywhere. Muni bus passes have been hiked for children and retirees. Metered parking tickets are $70, and some downtown meters clock $18 per hour. Kids will soon be charged to take the bus to school. Most of these costs tax the poorest San Franciscans.

Yet we don't question the $829 million a year that is being spent on pensions and benefits for city employees, who make up 6 percent of the city's workforce and on average earn $93,000 annually, compared with private-sector employees who earn $46,000 annually.

The carpenters, contractors, janitors, dentists, bookkeepers, hairdressers, doctors, shop owners, house painters, cabdrivers, waiters, actors, artists and the tens of thousands of others who work in San Francisco's private sector face a lifetime of financial insecurity. They have to pay for their health care benefits, and most are not covered should they fall sick in their old age. They have to salt money away for their retirement. They don't get an automatic monthly check irrespective of the performance of their savings. Many of them cannot afford to stop working.

Thus, we are in this odd predicament where 800,000 San Francisco residents are footing the bill for massive pension and benefit plans promised to 26,000 city employees and 28,000 retirees. Proposition B is an effort to do what our elected officials have either been unable or unwilling to do: require city employees to contribute 10 percent of their income to their pension plan and pay half of the cost of their dependents' health care premiums.

Proposition B does not cut pensions that have been promised to either retirees or existing employees. Prop. B does not raise the retirement age. Prop. B does not change the formulas by which pensions are calculated. Prop. B does not touch health care benefits that have been guaranteed. Prop. B. has no effect at all on widows and orphans. It merely asks existing city employees to do what every other citizen is doing - play some part in bailing out the city.

In five years, San Francisco will be paying about $1.5 billion a year for pension and benefit costs, over one-third of our entire general fund. As former Mayor Willie Brown has said, this problem either gets solved or San Francisco winds up in bankruptcy court. Prop. B will save at least $120 million a year. This money can be used to save critical services and protect the poor and vulnerable. It is far from being a complete solution - but it is a start.

Michael Moritz is a venture capitalist who lives in San Francisco.