After Donations To Christie Admin, Prudential Gets Millions In Fees

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration kept
investments in Prudential, after its top official gave to
Christie's campaign.Reuters/Mike Segar

 

Republican Gov. Chris Christie's administration has over the past five years paid at least $6.5 million in taxpayer fees to Prudential Financial to manage New Jersey pension funds, even after company officials made substantial contributions to Christie's 2009 gubernatorial campaign, International Business Times has learned. One of the Prudential officials was Christie's top fundraiser, adviser and donor. Christie appointees nonetheless maintained investment contracts with Prudential despite state rules that require such contracts to be canceled when executives at firms managing pension money donate to or raise money for state lawmakers. 

“It sounds like it’s a clear conflict with the rules,” said Melanie Sloan, a former U.S. Department of Justice official who served as executive director of the watchdog group CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), after IBTimes described its findings. “It seems like this thing is a clear violation of the rules. The rules just haven’t been enforced and now everyone is scrambling for cover.” READ MORE

 

 

How Rich Executives Extract Concessions From Workers -- While Playing the Good Guy in Public

Photo Credit: United Steelworkers

That's what's on the rise: Management attempting to exercise control over their workers -- in a brutal display of power. Give in to us or lose your paycheck right now.

February 6, 2012

When a contract expires and the union and the company bargain over a new one, there are a few possibilities. In the majority of cases, after negotiation, they come to an agreement, in all likelihood involving compromises on both sides. If they can't reach an agreement, a strike by workers is a possible outcome—but one that's declining in frequency, "just one-sixth the annual level of two decades ago," Steven Greenhouse reports. Another outcome, or perhaps cause, of stalled negotiations is becoming more common, though: The lockout, which has:

... grown to represent a record percentage of the nation’s work stoppages, according to Bloomberg BNA, a Bloomberg subsidiary that provides information to lawyers and labor relations experts. Last year, at least 17 employers imposed lockouts, telling their workers not to show up until they were willing to accept management’s contract offer.

We've seen it in both the NFL and the NBA in the past year, of course. But in many cases, companies lock out workers who are struggling even to stay in the middle class, because they won't give up the things that might put them in the middle class. Companies lock out workers to get them to give up their pensions, to pay more for health care, to accept pay cuts, to sacrifice job security. They rely on no one noticing (besides the workers, for whom their contempt is already clear), and on any public notice the lockouts do gain assigning blame at least equally to the workers—after all, shouldn't they feel lucky just to have jobs, and be willing to make whatever concessions management demands? As Charles Pierce wrote of the NBA lockout:   READ MORE

 

When Retirees Are Shortchanged

By BRYAN BURROUGH
Published: September 17, 2011

THE world needs more newspaper reporters like Ellen E. Schultz of The Wall Street Journal. For nearly a decade, Ms. Schultz and her colleagues have been rooting through the minutiae of accounting regulations, government filings and corporate retirement plans to expose how many of the largest American companies have systematically plundered their employees’ pension funds, at once robbing their workers of hard-won benefits and enriching their own profits. Her work has led to Congressional hearings, to a Washington investigation or two and to numerous journalism awards.
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