These days, we are hearing the word “legacy” a lot at the bargaining table.  Employers characterize long-standing commitments to lifelong employees and retirees such as defined benefit pension plans and post-retirement medical benefits as “legacy costs,” a term which is designed to sound much more burdensome and oppressive than describing these plans as fulfillments of promises made in the give-and-take of negotiations years ago. 

“Legacy” means much more than the sense in which it is used by employers today.

For one, “legacy” calls to mind the legacy that those who came before us built and then left for their employers. Ray Thomas, a member of our union staff, tells of driving up Highway 44 to  visit tree crews in Shingletown or the Frontier and Lassen MUD members in Susanville.  He drives by the last few miles of a 12-kv line that his father, Lee Thomas, built with a signatory contractor, Roger Electric, more than 25 years ago.  Lee died in 2000, but the line that he and his crew built is as plumb, square, and solid as the day it was built. The same can be said for hundreds of miles of line and pipe, and of the tradition of service that our past members established.

When an employer complains about a “legacy benefit” as an unfair drain on their bottom line, they should simply be reminded that they are making “legacy revenue” and “legacy profits” from the work that our members who are now retired or deceased performed years ago. Whether it is gas, electricity, telephone, drinking water, irrigation water, or tree trimming, our membership today is building a legacy for our signatory employers, a legacy that will make profits long after our generation has passed.

Another legacy that we must never forget is the legacy that union members in the past left for union members today. Their hard, diligent, and shrewd work at the bargaining table created the wage levels, benefits, and working conditions that we currently enjoy. We owe them our gratitude, but we owe them more. We owe them our strongest efforts possible to protect them in retirement, and we owe them the strength to follow their example by leaving a legacy for those who come after us. We stand on their shoulders. What we enjoy today is the result of their hard work and the legacy that they left for us.

So let’s not worry so much about “legacy costs,” unless we’re also taking into consideration the revenue and profits that are part of that legacy. 

And as we strive to protect the legacy left us, we must also focus on the legacy that we will leave. Our work is just beginning.

Posted: April 11, 2008