For 70 years, Social Security has worked for America, providing guaranteed benefits in retirement, and to workers and their families in the event that they become disabled or die before retirement. Sen. John McCain, as noted in the blog Crooks and Liars, is promoting a dangerous and irresponsible scheme to privatize Social Security.

McCain told the Wall Street Journal recently that he still supports President Bush’s discredited 2005 push to divert Americans’ hard earned Social Security into risky private accounts, which failed because of widespread opposition, including from AFSCME. His plan would hurt all of America’s working families, and would lead to huge cuts in guaranteed benefits that workers have earned and are counting on. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gets it right when he says that McCain’s proposal is “a lethal combination of bad ideas and total lack of comprehension.”

While he may be a maverick, Senator McCain’s plan would radically transform Social Security from guarantee of retirement security for millions into a gamble.

Folks are up in arms over the plans by George W. Bush’s Texas political heir to privatize the highways, according to the New York Times.

It’s a simple scheme, really. Rather than deal with the state’s transportation challenges, Governor Rick Perry wants to let private companies build roads and then charge Texans and others to use them. While that may lead to profits for the corporate investors, locals like Linda Stall fear they will pay the price:

“The only person who loses is the citizen,” she said. “We’re paying everyone’s profit.” She also said investors would “cherry pick” the most lucrative toll routes, leaving other sections unfinanced.

Driven by wrong-minded public officials and corporate greed, privatization and contracting out all too often fail the tests of cost effectiveness or quality. Time and time again, the public pays more and gets lower quality of services while public workers are laid off and corruption scandals make the news. Perry’s Texas toll-road boondoggle is just the latest – and one of the largest – example of a corporate giveaway. What will they privatize next?

Two years ago, members of AFSCME Council 62 vigorously protested state plans to outsource three Indiana state hospitals in Richmond, Evansville and Madison. The jobs of some 750 RNs, psychiatric attendants and behavioral technicians represented by the council were threatened by the scheme.

Family and Social Services Administration Sec. Mitch Roob ignored those protests. But last month, he finally – and formally – acknowledged what AFSCME has maintained all along: Privatization does not save money.

David Warrick, Council 62’s executive director and an International vice president, says Indiana state officials …

“… had to admit they couldn’t privatize the hospital without costing the taxpayers more money than it would take for the state to run it.”

Read more about the decision to drop the privatization scheme in these stories in The Indianapolis Star and the Palladium-Item.

Project Censored is a media research group that compiles an annual list of important news stories that have been overlooked by the country’s national media. High up on their latest ranking of under-reported stories is the stealth attempt to privatize America’s highways by both federal and state governments.

According to Project Censored:

[S]tates are selling off our nation’s enormous, and aging, infrastructure to private investors. Proponents are celebrating these transactions as a no-pain, all-gain way to off-load maintenance expenses and increase highway-building funds without raising taxes. Opponents are lambasting these plans as a major turn toward handing the nation’s valuable common asset over to private firms whose fidelity is to stockholders – not to the public transportation system or the people who use it.

Driven by wrong-minded public officials and corporate greed, contracts for public services are being increasingly doled out without regard to cost effectiveness or quality. Privatization is an all too often bad idea as the public ends up paying more for lower quality services. That’s why AFSCME continues to fight politicians who want to send public-sector jobs to private companies.

To read more, visit Project Censored’s Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008 and scroll down to number nine.

When we fight, we win. That was the theme of the last International Union convention. It was also a rallying cry for Rhode Island AFSCME members recently when they successfully stopped the privatization of dietary and housekeeping services at the Eleanor Slater Hospital and the Rhode Island Veteran’s Home.

The Rhode Island General Assembly voted to override Governor Donald Carcieri’s veto of a budget amendment to limit the State’s ability to sell off services to the lowest bidder. AFSCME RI Council 94 members led a full-court press of television ads, email, faxes, and face-to-face lobbying to win support for the anti-privatization measure.

While this was an important victory, Council 94’s President J. Michael Downey pointed out that it is part of a longer battle.

As Governor Carcieri picks out his next state service to privatize, one thing is for sure – Rhode Island AFSCME members will be there to stand up and fight back.

Custodians at the 10 campuses of the University of California (UC) scored a major victory in their fight for better wages and to put an end to the outsourcing of groundskeepers. UC and AFSCME Local 3299 members reached a settlement that mandates wage increases for all UC custodians and allows the replaced groundskeepers to be brought on as full UC employees effective July 1, 2007.

The agreement was based on the recommendations of former state Senate Pres. Pro Tem John Burton, who mediated between both parties. The 18-month struggle was backed by high-profile boycotts of UC campuses by former President Bill Clinton, presidential candidate John Edwards, and actor/activist Danny Glover and also included boisterous student protests.

Rhode Island Council 94 has taken to the airwaves to preserve public services provided by its 10,000 members, some of whom work as dietary and housekeeping employees at a state hospital and a veterans’ home.

Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri’s (R) proposed 2008 budget would outsource those services at the Eleanor Slater Hospital in Cranston and the Rhode Island Veterans Home in Bristol.

Council 94 knows the nation’s veterans deserve better care than to receive services from a for-profit employer whose main concern is the bottom line. That’s why the council is fighting back with a media campaign. Watch their television ads below or at these links on YouTube: “Family” and “Taking On Privatization”.

Read more about Council 94’s ad campaign on Working Rhode Island’s site.