Samuelsen to New York Times: Your Attack on Union Role in Guiding Public Pensions is Off-Base

In an opinion piece in the Chief-Leader, TWU Local 100 President John Samuelsen ripped the New York Times for its doom-and-gloom coverage of public pension plans such as NYCERS, which more than 25,000 TWU members at the Transit Authority belong to. In an August 3 front-page story, The Times sounds alarm bells about the cost of our pensions, but fails to share an important piece of news: NYCERS and the other 4 NYC public pension funds just had their best year in memory, notching a 17% return on portfolios of stocks, bonds, and alternative investments. The New York Times’s hidden agenda, Samuelsen says, isn’t so hard to figure out. The Times is doing the bidding of Wall Street by implying that union trustees shouldn’t have a voice in the pension funds’ investments. This opposes the legitimate role that unions play in protecting their members and holding companies to ethical standards. Read the opinion piece here.