The widely respected Pew Charitable Trusts is engaged in a major ongoing campaign with right-wing Enron billionaire John Arnold to undercut public pensions across the country, writes David Sirota in a report released Thursday for the Institute for America's Future. According to Sirota, Pew positions itself as a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the public interest, but when it comes to pensions, Pew has taken an extreme position and allied itself with conservative activists bent on undoing public pension programs across the country to protect corporate subsidies.

As recently reported, conservatives across the country are stepping up their assaults on the pensions of public workers. But it isn't just at the local government level that such attacks are happening. Legislation that would change or cut public pensions are being pursued in several states, including Oklahoma. Much like the proposals you see in the cities, Tulsa World is reporting Gov. Mary Fallin (R) and Republican legislative leaders are pushing a plan to switch pensions for state workers from defined-benefit plans to defined-contribution plans, which could amount to massive cuts in retiree benefits. The switch would leave many, including those who are not part of the Social Security system, in poverty.

Pension battles are heating up in cities across the nation as conservatives and Republicans are pushing to strip public workers of their retirement plans, often with little or nothing offered as a replacement. The primary argument, although a false one, is that these pensions are "too expensive" and that during times of fiscal woes, cities can't afford them. In reality, these plans are often little more than veiled attempts to abandon commitments to workers and shift spending to more conservative priorities.

Bankruptcy laws are rigged against working people. Employers, corporations and lenders often exploit these laws to weaken our retirement security, cut health care and leave young workers saddled with student loan debt, without the prospect of a good job or the ability to discharge the debt through bankruptcy. 

Today, the AFL-CIO passed a convention resolution addressing the need to reform our country's bankruptcy laws to better shield workers from harm in the form of broken pension and health care promises and to diminish economic hardship that comes from these bankruptcies. 

Cincinnati voters will decide this fall on a ballot measure to eliminate pensions for city workers that was written by an extremist right-wing think tank, funded by unnamed out-of-state interests and promoted by tea party activists.

Several unions representing Detroit city works and retirees challenged Detroit’s claim for bankruptcy protection. The challenges were filed Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit, the court which will determine if the city is eligible for bankruptcy protection. AFSCME Council 25 said the city has not proven it is insolvent and has not negotiated in good faith with its creditors.

More than 2,000 Mine Workers (UMWA) members and retirees, other union members and faith and community activists rallied outside the St. Louis corporate headquarters of Peabody Energy in the latest action demanding fairness for the active and retired miners caught in the 2012 boardroom-orchestrated bankruptcy of Patriot Coal.

Information about the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) working in secret to push state-level policy to more extreme levels is coming to light more and more and America's working families are starting to stand up to the group's corporate-driven agenda. While ALEC's agenda is all over the policy map, the organization has a particular focus on pushing new laws that attack working families and undercut the rights of workers, both in the workplace and in retirement.  Here are eight of the most dangerous and most widespread ways that ALEC is targeting workers and their right to a voice on the job.

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing “must not be used as a tool to impoverish city of Detroit workers or retirees,” says the AFL-CIO Executive Council, in a statement from its July meeting.

City workers already have made severe concessions to keep the city afloat. They are not to blame for Detroit’s financial problems, yet they have been making sacrifices all along the way to help the city out….The AFL-CIO will continue to support our city of Detroit active and retired members in their fight to maintain dignity on the job, a safe workplace, fair wages and benefits for their labor, and against cuts in the pensions they have paid for and earned.

Before Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) and his hand-picked emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr rushed the city’s bankruptcy filing to federal court last week, they refused to sit down and discuss the future of the city’s workers and retirees, AFSCME President Lee Saunders said this morning on "The Bill Press Show." He told Press:

They have not sat down and talked with the union at all in Detroit. They have refused to do so, to talk about how these issued can be resolved. They have said they’ve attempted to have these kinds of discussions. That is a bold-faced lie.