Governor Brown has announced a plan to pay down some of the PERS unfunded liability, and shift costs to employees. The following is a statement from SEIU 503 Executive Director Melissa Unger:

Current versions of this plan are unfair and place too much of the burden on public employees. They represent a broken promise to members who do their jobs every day and expect the State to hold up its end of the deal.

We favor reforms that protect our teachers, firefighters, public nurses and other critical public services workers. For example, we continue to call on the legislature to redirect the SAIF surplus to help buy down the pension debt, and would support other viable options that allow us to invest in public services and the people who provide them.

We encourage public employees who would be effected by this to write their legislators and the Governor, letting them know what a cut would mean to you and your family. We’ve set up an action page to make that easy. You can find that here.