This just out: A Time Magazine feature on executive compensation and how the “Say on Pay” movement began… at AFSCME. AFSCME has led shareholder reform efforts at major U.S. corporations such as AIG, Morgan Stanley and Home Depot and has played a leading role fighting for more democratic elections on corporate boards and has led the effort to restrain runaway executive pay. Read the full story.

Also out this week, USA Today ran a three-page feature on executive compensation complete with an interactive chart of CEO pay and stock awards at the top 50 companies in the S&P 500.

Today AFSCME is leading an effort to vote against the directors at Washington Mutual, who decided to award bonuses to executives despite the huge losses to the company from the subprime mortgage mess for which they were directly responsible. We will continue these efforts until skyrocketing CEO and executive pay is brought under control.

The Social Security Board of Trustees released its annual report on the program’s financial status. According to Treasury Department Secretary Henry Paulson, its findings confirm “that the Social Security program is financially unstable and requires reform.”

Really?

While doomsayers are already claiming the sky is falling, a close look at the numbers tells a different story.

According to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the trustees’ report actually

“reaffirms that Social Security does not face a near-term crisis and can continue to pay full benefits for more than three decades.”

According to the CBPP, there are far more troubling threats when it comes to the country’s financial well-being:

Anyone concerned about Social Security’s long-term shortfall ought to be equally (if not more) concerned about the long-term fiscal impact of extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Making the tax cuts permanent will cost more than three times as much, over the next 75 years, as the 75-year shortfall in Social Security.

In other words, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich are much more damaging for the economy than any alleged Social Security crisis. As the AFL-CIO blog points out, this is a thinly-veiled scheme to once again push for privatizing the most successful program in America’s history:

Bush and his cohorts in 2005 failed miserably to convince the American public that Social Security privatization was the holy grail of retirement security. But still, they persist in trying to sell this snake oil.

Indeed they do. Witness Sen. John McCain’s plan to divert American’s retirement money into risky private accounts, almost a carbon copy of Bush’s failed initiative.

Paulson, Bush, McCain & company might have a short-term memory when it comes to playing with people’s retirement security. Working families don’t.

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.

Like David battling Goliath, a handful of city workers have decisively defeated a powerful foe, armed only with a lawsuit as their slingshot.

The “David” in this case: 29 members of Local 2957 (AFSCME Council 38), whose vested retiree health benefits were arbitrarily cut off by city officials in 2004 in a ruling requiring that all city retirees pay the same premiums as if they were active employees.

The employees sought justice in court. Twice they won, twice the city appealed. Now, in a third (and hopefully final) decision (PDF) the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that …

“… correctly determined that the [city council’s] resolutions were unconstitutional under the Contract Clause [of the U.S. Constitution].”

This story in The Benton Courier, and this posting on AFSCME Council 965’s blog, tells the tale.

The Supreme Court has just refused to hear a case that let major banks complicit in the Enron fraud off the hook from paying damages to investors hurt by the scandal.

As a story in The Washington Post said:

The ruling is a staggering setback to the movement to expand investor rights. Often, financial experts say, business partners and corporate advisers are the only deep pockets left to tap after a scandal-ridden company has succumbed to bankruptcy.

If this was not enough, only a few days earlier the court ruled that third parties can’t be held liable for damages in cases where they aided schemes to commit fraud. The case, known as Stoneridge Investment Partners v Scientific-Atlanta, is also bad news for working families.

Why?

It’s simple. Think about the mortgage crisis, for example. Mortgage brokers and investment banks built a system in which they generated huge fee revenues and then passed off risk to investors. These risky mortgages were packaged by Wall Street bankers to sell to investors like our public pension funds.

Now that there’s a mortgage crisis, our retirement funds could be hit by losses that would make Enron look pennyante. Meanwhile, the parties responsible have less to fear now because, just like the banks involved in the Enron scandal, they may be immune from litigation.

In the end, the failed CEOs who led these companies walk about with hundreds of millions of dollars as working people are left holding the bag. This is why the fight for investor rights is also our fights because, ultimately, it’s things like our mortgages and our retirement that are on the line.

A lot. That’s the only conclusion anyone with a pulse could reach when watching Steve Skvara, a disabled, retired steel worker from Indiana, pose a question to the candidates at last night’s AFL-CIO presidential forum.

Skvara drew huge applause and a standing ovation after his moving description of how, after working for decades at LTV Steel, the company cut his pension by one-third and abolished his health care coverage. Skvara emotionally described being unable to pay for health care coverage for his wife who had devoted her life to him and their family. His question for the candidates?

What’s wrong with America, and what will you do to change it?

See Steve ask his question:

Read more at the AFL-CIO’s blog.

AFSCME is at the forefront of pressuring corporate America to rein in skyrocketing CEO salaries and to preserve shareholder value, which determines the size of our pension checks when we retire.

As a leading shareholder activist, the AFSCME Employees Pension Plan recently brought together a network of institutional investors committed to giving shareholders a vote on corporate executive pay. Our goal: to make sure that CEOs and top executives are being paid for stellar company performance and not compensated outrageously for stuffing their own pockets with generous incentives and stock options.

In addition to seeking a shareholder vote on CEO pay, AFSCME is also working to make it easier for shareholders to nominate candidates to serve on corporate boards and to ensure that company directors are truly independent. These are just a few highlights of our union’s ambitious 2007 shareholder program.

“Large institutional investors have a duty to actively encourage good governance and corporate accountability, and that’s what these proposals are seeking to do,” said AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee, who chairs the Employees Pension Plan. “Our proposals are designed to give shareholders the tools to make boards listen.”