Union pensions are funding private equity attacks on workers
On October 7–8, I'm in Milan to keynote Wired Nextfest.
If end-stage capitalism has a motto, it's this: "Stop hitting yourself." The great failure of "voting with your wallet" is that you're casting ballots in a one party system (The Capitalism Party), and the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes.
During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese state would bill the families of executed dissidents for the ammunition used to execute their loved ones:
And the dollars we save for retirement are flushed into the stock market casino, a game that is rigged against us, where we are always the suckers at the table:
Everywhere and always, we are financing our own destruction. It's quite a Mr Gotcha moment:
https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/
Now, anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. We are living through a broad, multi-front counter-revolution to Reaganomics and neoliberal Democratic Party sellouts. The FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division are dragging Big Tech and Big Meat and Big Publishing into court. We're seeing bans on noncompete clauses, and high-profile government enforcers are publicly pledging never to work for corporate law-firms when they quit public service:
And of course, there's the reinvigoration of the labor movement! Hot Labor Summer is now Perpetual Labor September, with 75,000 Kaiser workers walking out alongside the UAW, SAG-AFTRA and 2,350 other groups of workers picketing, striking or protesting:
https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu/
But capitalism still gets a lick in. Union pension plans are some of the most important investors in private equity funds. Your union pension dollars are probably funding the union-busting, child-labor-employing, civilization-destroying Gordon Gecko LARPers who are also evicting you from the rental they bought and turned into a slum, and will then murder you in a hospice that they bought and turned into a slaughterhouse:
And they couldn't do it without union pension funds. Public service union pensions have invested $650 million with PE funds. In 2001, the share of public union pensions invested in PE was 3.5%; today, it's 13%:
This results in some ghastly and ironic situations. Aramark used funds from a custodian's union to bid against that union's members for contracts, in an attempt to break the union and force the workers to take a paycut to $11/hour:
Blackstone's investors include the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). The PE ghouls who sucked Toys R Us dry were funded by Texas teachers.
Then there's KKR, one of the most rapacious predators of the PE world. Half of the investors in KKR's Global Infrastructure Investors IV fund are public sector pension funds. Those workers' money were spent to buy up Refresco (Arizona Iced Tea, Tropicana juices, etc), a transaction that immediately precipitated a huge spike in on-the-job accidents as KKR cut safety and increased tempo:
Petsmart is the poster-child for PE predation. The company uses TRAPs ("TrainingRepaymentAgreementProvision") clauses to recreate indentured servitude, forcing workers to pay thousands of dollars to quit their jobs:
Why would a Petsmart employee want to quit? Petsmart's PE owner is BC Partners, and under BC's management, workers have been forced to work impossible hours while overseeing cruel animal abuse, including starving sick animals to death rather than euthanizing them, and then being made to sneak them into dumpsters on the way home from work so Petsmart doesn't have to pay for cremation. 24 of BC Partners' backers are public pension funds, including CalSTRS and the NYC Employees' Retirement System:
PE buyouts are immediately followed by layoffs. One in five PE acquisitions goes bankrupt. Unions should not be investing in PE. But the managers of these funds defend the practice, saying they "facilitate dialog" with the PE bosses on workers' behalf.
This isn't total nonsense. Once upon a time, public pension fund managers put pressure on investees to force them to divest from Apartheid South Africa and tobacco companies. Even today, public pensions have successfully applied leverage to get fund managers to drop Russian investments after the invasion of Ukraine. And public pensions pulled out of the private prison sector, tanking the valuation of some of the largest players.
But there's no evidence that this leverage is being applied to pensions' PE billions. It's not like PE is a great deal for these pensions. PE funds don't reliably outperform the market, especially after PE bosses' sky-high fees are clawed back:
Pension funds could match or beat their PE returns by sticking the money in a low-load Vanguard index tracker. What's more, PE is getting worse, pioneering new scams like inflating the value of companies after they buy and strip-mine them, even though there's no reason to think anyone would buy these hollow companies at the price that the PE companies assign to them for bookkeeping purposes:
To inject a little verisimilitude into this obvious fantasy, PE companies sell their portfolio companies to themselves at inflated prices, in a patently fraudulent shell-game:
What's more, PE funds aren't just bad bosses, they're also bad landlords. PE-backed funds have scooped up an appreciable fraction of America's housing stock, transforming good rentals into slums:
As the labor movement flexes its muscle, it needs to break this connection. Workers should not be paying for the bullet that their bosses put through their skulls.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!
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PEMAIN naturalisasi baru timnas Indonesia Miliano Jonathans mengaku sudah tidak sabar dengan petualangan barunya bersama tim nasional Indone
PEMAIN naturalisasi baru timnas Indonesia Miliano Jonathans mengaku sudah tidak sabar dengan petualangan barunya bersama tim nasional Indonesia. Penyerang sayap 21 tahun tersebut bahkan mengaku sudah berkomunikasi dengan arsitek timnas Patrick Kluivert.
"Saya sudah menghubunginya. Kami sempat membahas gaya bermain dan hal-hal lain. Saya sangat menantikanny,” kata Miliano, dikutip dari laman daring FC Utrecht.
“Ayah saya sempat menonton pertandingan timnas beberapa bulan lalu. Jadi saya sangat penasaran untuk melihat seperti apa nanti. Ini adalah petualangan yang benar-benar baru bagi saya, dan saya tak sabar untuk memulainya," lanjutnya.
Disetujui DPR
Bersama dengan Mauro Zijlstra (20), Miliano sudah mendapatkan persetujuan dari Rapat Paripurna DPR RI pada Selasa (26/8). Selanjutnya, mereka tinggal menungu Surat Keputusan Presiden (Keppres) sebagai syarat pengambilan sumpah menjadi Warga Negara Indonesia (WNI).
Following today’s meeting between FIFA President Gianni Infantino and President of the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI) Erick Thohir, FIFA has decided, due to the current circumstances, to remove Indonesia as the host of the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2023™. A new host will be announced as soon as possible, with the dates of the tournament currently remaining unchanged. Potential sanctions against the PSSI may also be decided at a later stage.
FIFA would like to underline that despite this decision, it remains committed to actively assisting the PSSI, in close cooperation and with the support of the government of President Widodo, in the transformation process of Indonesian football following the tragedy that occurred in October 2022. Members of the FIFA team will continue to be present in Indonesia in the coming months and will provide the required assistance to the PSSI, under the leadership of President Thohir.
Corruption has been a long-standing problem. Nurdin Halid, a former PSSI president, was convicted twice on corruption charges in the previous decade. So blatant was political interference in the league that the world governing body FIFA suspended Indonesia from international match play in 2015, after which the government shut down PSSI and announced it would set up its own association. The ban was lifted last year.
John Duerden, 'Hooliganism is killing Indonesia’s beautiful game', Asia Times
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KOMISI X DPR RI menyetujui permohonan naturalisasi pesepak bola Mitchell Lee Baker dan Luke Anthony Vickery untuk menjadi Warga Negara Indon
KOMISI X DPR RI menyetujui permohonan naturalisasi pesepak bola Mitchell Lee Baker dan Luke Anthony Vickery untuk menjadi Warga Negara Indonesia (WNI) yang diajukan oleh Kementerian Pemuda dan Olahraga.
"Komisi X DPR RI memutuskan menyetujui rekomendasi pemberian kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia atas nama Mitchell Lee Baker dan Luke Anthony Vickery," kata Wakil Ketua Komisi X DPR RI Lalu Hadrian Irfani saat membacakan kesimpulan rapat kerja terkait pertimbangan pemberian kewarganegaraan RI bersama Menteri Pemuda dan Olahraga Erick Thohir di Jakarta, Senin.
Persetujuan naturalisasi tersebut diberikan dengan sejumlah catatan. Komisi X menekankan bahwa naturalisasi atlet harus dilakukan secara selektif dengan mempertimbangkan kebutuhan strategis, komitmen atlet yang dinaturalisasikan, kriteria yang jelas dan transparan, program pembibitan dan pembinaan jangka panjang, dukungan terhadap regenerasi pemain, serta evaluasi yang berkelanjutan.
Laporan berkala
Komisi X juga mendesak Kementerian Pemuda dan Olahraga serta Persatuan Sepak Bola Seluruh Indonesia (PSSI) untuk menyampaikan laporan secara berkala mengenai capaian program naturalisasi, kontribusi atlet yang telah dinaturalisasikan, serta dampaknya terhadap pengembangan dan prestasi sepak bola nasional.
SANKSI berat dijatuhkan Komite Disiplin (Komdis) PSSI untuk Persipura Jayapura, terkait insiden saat laga melawan Adhyaksa FC Banten, dalam
SANKSI berat dijatuhkan Komite Disiplin (Komdis) PSSI untuk Persipura Jayapura, terkait insiden saat laga melawan Adhyaksa FC Banten, dalam Pegadaian Championship 2025/2026, di Stadion Lukas Enembe, Jayapura, Jumat (8/5).
Setidaknya ada lima sanksi sekaligus yang diterima Mutiara Hitam. Kelima sanksi terpisah itu mencakup denda total sebanyak Rp240 juta, larangan menggelar pertandingan kandang dengan penonton selama satu musim penuh pada kompetisi 2026/2027, serta peringatan bahwa pelanggaran serupa akan berujung pada hukuman yang lebih berat.
Sanksi pertama dijatuhkan terkait pelemparan empat smoke bomb dari seluruh sisi tribun, penyalaan empat flare, serta ledakan petasan di Tribun Utara, Selatan, Timur, dan Barat setelah pertandingan selesai. Atas pelanggaran tersebut, Persipura didenda Rp125 juta.
FEDERASI Futsal Indonesia resmi berganti nama menjadi Asosiasi Futsal Indonesia (AFI). Hal itu menjadi salah satu keputusan Kongres FFI 2026
FEDERASI Futsal Indonesia resmi berganti nama menjadi Asosiasi Futsal Indonesia (AFI). Hal itu menjadi salah satu keputusan Kongres FFI 2026 di Jakarta, Selasa.
Ketua Umum AFI Michael Sianipar menyebut, transformasi itu sesuai dengan visi dan pedoman yang berlaku mengenai posisi organisasi futsal Indonesia yang berada di bawah naungan PSSI dan FIFA.
"Setelah kongres, kami akan melaporkan hal ini kepada PSSI untuk ditindaklanjuti agar tetap pada statuta,” kata Ketua AFI Michael pada konferensi pers seusai kongres.
Menurut dia, perubahan nama itu juga semakin menegaskan integrasi futsal dan ekosistemnya Sebab rencana perubahan nama FFI ke AFI sebenarnya sudah dibahas pada Kongres PSSI pada 2025.
Selain itu, Michael melanjutkan, langkah tersebut diambil sebagai penyatuan pengelolaan dan ekosistem futsal nasional lebih terorganisir.
Di kongres ini juga dibahas mengenai perubahan AD/ART AFI dengan beberapa penyesuaian sesuai dengan statuta PSSI.
"Langkah kami jelas, ingin membangun sinergi dan ekosistem dengan sepak bola. Apa yang sudah terjadi di pusat akan lanjut ke level daerah. Pesan Pak Erick (Ketua Umum PSSI Erick Thohir-red), kalau futsal naik kelas, organisasinya juga naik kelas," tutur Michael.
AFI berharap dengan reorganisasi ini memperkuat sinergi dari pusat, daerah, dan klub anggota. Transformasi itu menjadi satu langkah strategis bagi Indonesia yang berencana mencalonkan diri sebagai tuan rumah Piala Dunia Futsal 2028. (*/N-01)
