Tell the AFL-CIO: Give Your Staff A Fair Pension Deal!

AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond

Pensions at the AFL-CIO have been frozen since 2014. Managers were recently told that they would be receiving a 60% retroactive unfreeze of their pension benefits at no cost to them, but dedicated Guild-represented staff are being denied this same improvement to retirement benefits.

AFL-CIO management’s most recent proposal to resolve the pension equity issues raised by the Guild is for union members to sacrifice $5.6 million, over the course of their careers, worth of hard-fought cost-of-living adjustments to pay for a gap in pension funding that only costs $619,000. For perspective, this is 9 times what it would take to cover the cost of the unfreeze.

This wage cut proposal is even more insulting when you take into account that from October 2014 to April 2023, Guild members at the AFL-CIO received no unit-wide cost-of-living (COLA) adjustments to the staff salary schedule. During this period, the cumulative rate of inflation was 28%. After inflation, the average Guild member’s real income fell by -19% during this period.

This is not a matter of the AFL-CIO lacking the funds necessary to give us pension equity: in 2023, the AFL-CIO spent $9.6 million alone on consultants. The AFL-CIO could cover the cost of our pension unfreeze and give dedicated staff a secure retirement by spending only 7% of what it spends on consultants.

The staff of the largest federation of labor unions in the country deserve better. The labor movement has long said: A pension is a promise. The AFL-CIO should be keeping that promise and setting the standard for how workers should be treated.
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AFL-CIO Guild
Washington, DC

To: AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond
From: [Your Name]

A pension is a promise! Give the hardworking, dedicated members of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild who make up a third of your staff the same pension deal you're giving to managers without taking away their pay increases. Unions should be setting the standard for worker treatment, not depriving life-long staff the dignity of a secure retirement.