The Chief Leader
BOB HENNELLY
Union Resistance
Several union leaders with a stake in those funds took issue with the move. “Public pensions are a right guaranteed to state and municipal workers and retirees who have devoted much of their lives to protecting and serving the public,” said Michael Carrube, president of the Subway Surface Supervisors Association, which represents more than 4,000 bus and subway supervisors. “Our pensions are and should be protected from ambitious politicians who would try to use them as policy experiments or as part of some broad political agenda that ultimately affects our members and other working families.”
In Albany a similar fossil-fuel divestment strategy advanced by Governor Cuomo and environmental advocates in the State Legislature encountered resistance from public-union leaders who saw the move as driven by politics rather than the long-term financial interests of their members.]
Last year the Suffolk County Association of Municipal Employees commissioned an independent analysis of the impact of fossil-fuel divestment and found that the Common Retirement Fund would lose $2.8 billion over 20 years if the sell-off were executed….
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