WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: James Bertolone serves as President of the Rochester & Genesee Valley Area Labor Federation, whose 300 affiliated Union Locals combine to represent 100,000 Union Members in the Rochester & Finger Lakes Regions of New York State.

In my first Labor Column of 2012, I’ll touch on several big stories in this Presidential Election Year that have been mostly ignored by the Mainstream/Corporate Media. 

First is the claim, that’s been going on for years, of a growing pension and retirement crisis in America.  This false premise has been used to slash Pensions and Medical Coverage to millions of American Retirees and future Retirees. 

Hundreds of companies - from IBM to Verizon - have engaged in these cuts while the corporate 1%, with a large assist from the media, have sold this to the public as a perfect storm of uncontrollable economics such as an aging workforce, entitled retirees, stock market losses and an outmoded Pension System that hurts their ability to compete in the Global Economy. 

The fact is - as late as 2000, American Corporations had more than $250 billion dollars in excess assets in their Pension Funds.  They got the ERISA Advisory Council, dominated by representatives of the same corporations, and selling "trickle down" to change the accounting rules.  They said adding these surpluses to the bottom line would make the company stronger and more competitive, thus actually making Workers and Retirees’ Pensions and Health Benefits more secure. 

But in fact, these surpluses did artificially inflate the bottom line, which corporate executives took credit for and then paid to themselves in huge salaries, bonuses and their own retirement and golden parachute severance packages. 

This was also used for quick-buck mergers, acquisitions and downsizing.

Reducing the number of Employees would again give the appearance of over-funded pensions. 

In the past three years, General Electric alone paid out more than half-a-billion dollars in retirement or severance to its executives alone. 

It appears that we’re not talking about penalizing success when we speak of executives who once made 30 times what their Employees made and now average 300 times their Workers' earnings and who walk away with exorbitant packages.  They did not preside over such real increases in the bottom line, but took not only all the wealth Workers created that should have gone to wages, but stole their pensions too! 

This is all documented in a book that’s gone unnoticed in the mainstream media: Retirement Heist - How Companies Plunder And Profit From The Nest Eggs of American Workers, by Eileen Schultz - who is not from academia or a Labor Think Tank, but an award-winning reporter for the most conservative, pro-business publication we have: The Wall Street Journal. 

Meanwhile, our mainstream media continues to confuse success for what really are the crimes of the century.
 
Another story from the corporate media that has received plenty of coverage, but little depth, namely the implosion of the County of Greece that was followed by the destruction of the rest of the economies of Europe, with all of its global ramifications. 

One would think from the coverage that the financial ruin is the fault of the victims. 

Somehow, after decades, a system that does not have the obscene and unfair concentration of wealth the top, like us, is the cause of their problems. 

Business pundits fail to report or they gloss over the effect Casino Capitalism and fraud on Wall Street has had on the Global Economy. 

I’ve talked before how WTO-GATT Free Trade Agreements enabled the off-shoring of jobs and that the off-shoring jobs are not and never has been trade. 

Certainly that’s not what the great economist on trade, David Ricardo, was describing in his win-win, mutually-beneficial example of Portuguese wine for English wool. 

When it comes to Global Finance there doesn't seem to be any discussion in the media of the World Trade Organization Financial Services Agreement (WTO-FSA).  Those negotiations, with Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers as main negotiators for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, had an advisory group that they relied upon called the Financial Leaders Group (FLG).  Among the members of the FLB were Bank of America, Citibank, Chase Manhattan (now JP Morgan), Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch. 

In April 1998 Travelers Group, mostly an investment bank, took over Citicorp, a merger that made millions for the executives.  The problem was the merger was against the law, namely the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.  This was the wall erected between commercial and investment banks to avoid a repeat of the speculation and fraud that helped give us the Great Depression.  The government would insure savings accounts, but these Government-Insured Savings Accounts could not be used for long-shot speculation.  The merger propped the stock up to $24 billion, but the new entity, Citigroup, had put American Taxpayers on the hook for insuring that $24 billion.  At that time Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, asked Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall.  Congress did just that, to relax Global Financial Regulations.  The new law was signed just weeks after Rubin left the Treasury and joined Citigroup, picking up $126 million in the bargain. 

I guess it's only felony corruption if one embezzles a thousand dollars. 

Soon Goldman Sachs was pumping out new derivative products, but one still had to change the laws in other countries in order to bet government guaranteed savings accounts on toxic, speculative garbage. 

It was codified with what was considered a minor trade treaty, the Financial Services Agreement.  From that point on if a country wanted to trade with the United States if would have to buy these toxic financial products. 

Goldman Sachs got Greece to pay cash for these products, overvalued to actually make it look like Greece's debt and the debt of the Country was a small percentage of Greece's GDP - and the band played this song in country after country. 

The media has not even begun to delve into the greed and corruption of some of the 1%.
 
Let me conclude with my take on a national, but also very local story, namely the destruction of the once great Eastman Kodak Company. 

Thirty years ago it gave us 60,000 Middle-Class Jobs as its Workers produced and invented great products like Digital Photography - which Kodak Executives sat on until everyone else had all the market share. 

This is just one example of the corporate incompetence that shafted Workers and threatens retirees Pensions and Health Benefits. 

It could also threaten Taxpayers on the hook for two thirds of the Pensions if bankruptcy results. 

This issue calls to task the local media bosses and local Chamber of Commerce. 

The Corporate executives, from Fischer to Perez, literally pocketed tens of millions of dollars while destroying a great company and hurting its loyal Workers - as well as the community. 

Where is the vilification and demand for accountability? 

The bosses at Gannett have no problem in their company editorials demanding the highest standard of accountability from Teachers, Cops, Firefighters, even the School Janitor, while vilifying them for making a Middle-Class Wage and a retirement with dignity - all while claiming they are Champions of the Taxpayers.

And the same goes for the local Chamber of Commerce. 

Where’s the vilification of Kodak Execs?  

Where’s the demand for accountability? 

But do not despair - as we are being provided the solution for Economic Justice, and evidently its name is Bain Capital.