IEA members and staff, along with members and supporters of other unions, have successfully fought off another attempt to slash pensions for public employees.

The Illinois legislature today adjourned without acting on Senate Bill 512, the pension-cutting bill drafted by the Chicago-based Civic Committee, a small group of extremely wealthy business people.

The Civic Committee spent huge amounts of money on misleading and dishonest ads that claimed the cost of employee benefits were the cause of the state's pension problem. They maintained that the only answer was to pass SB 512, a bill that would have dramatically increased the cost of a pension for most public employees.

The bill also would have had the effect of destabilizing the state pension systems by forcing many participants out of the pension systems and into a 401K-type plan. In addition, SB 512 would end up actually costing the state millions of additional dollars, rather than saving money for Illinois.

Despite the big spending on ads and the free publicity from the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, SB 512, for the second time this year, was not called for a floor vote after passing out of a House committee.

The activism by IEA members and staff, working with the members of the We Are One Illinois coalition and supportive members of the public, succeeded in keeping SB 512 from being voted on during the fall legislative session, just as similar activism fought off the bill during the spring session.

Why SB 512 didn't pass

The IEA strategy was to mobilize members at the most opportune time.

We sought to keep our members informed via the IEA website, which has seen a huge increase in visits. www.ieanea.org has had more than one million page views already this year and an average of more than 20 thousand views per day this week alone.

We've also reached large segments of our members through our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

IEA also used radio advertising to heighten public awareness of the unfair pension attack, running thousands of 60-second commercials on nearly 60 stations statewide.

The biggest factor in our success is the activism of IEA members, who made their feelings known to their state senators and representatives:

• Using data provided by IEA, members sent tens of thousands of email messages to legislators through the IEA website, telling lawmakers to reject SB 512.

• Tens of thousands of phone calls were placed to lawmakers using the hotline provided by the We Are One Illinois labor coalition (IEA is a coalition member).

• Newspapers statewide ran either my letter on pensions or a similar letter from a local IEA leader, urging that SB 512 be rejected.

The fight is not over

At this moment, it's not clear whether the sponsors of SB 512 are prepared to admit defeat. We must remain vigilant until the legislature's work for 2011 is concluded.

Lawmakers will return to Springfield on Nov. 29 to look at legislation unrelated to pensions. We are watching to make sure nothing changes that could impact the pension systems.

Looking farther down the road, we know that there will be another push on "pension reform" in the legislative session beginning in January 2012. We also know that it falls to the unions representing the pension system participants, to come up with a plan to address the problems inherent in systems that have been underfunded by $85 billion.

We didn't cause the pension problem, but the problem exists and must be addressed.

As one of IEA's friends in the legislature said this week, "I'm against SB 512 today, but if this is the only plan we have in front of us in the spring, I'm going to vote for it because we have to deal with the problem."

That position, we believe, is likely to be embraced by many lawmakers over the coming months, which is why IEA and our coalition partners must step up and lead on this issue.

The people behind SB 512 have it in for our pension plans. Their true goal is to reduce pension benefits and, in the long term, move all public employees to defined contribution plans. That is not in the interests of our members; that is not in the interest of the state.

We need to develop a plan that is constitutional, fair to the participants and will ensure the systems will, for many decades to come, continue to deliver the benefits earned by the participants and retirees. The pension systems must be sustainable.

You will be hearing more about this. I want you to be informed and I want to hear your ideas.

Our success was the product of a team effort by all of IEA. Because of the high level of involvement from members, leaders and staff, a bad bill did not become law.

Your efforts have put us in a position where we can influence the outcome on this very important issue.

Thank you so much for your hard work. Let's keep fighting the good fight.