You did not understand my gripe about that. Did you? The politicians making policies with the union and contracts do not suffer the consequences of bad decisions.
PERS here in Oregon comes to kind Here is the serach engine AI response:
Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) faces significant funding issues, primarily due to an unfunded actuarial liability that has grown to $24 billion, meaning the system owes far more in pension payments than it has in assets. Contributing factors include poor investment returns, reliance on private equity, and increasing contribution rates that strain public budgets without providing additional benefits to current employees or students.
Hers is an article on it:
The state's unfunded liability for PERS, the amount needed to cover every public worker's pension, grew by $8 billion last year — reaching a total of $28 billion.
www.kgw.com
This is not the whole of it. For decades, it has been known that the agreement cannot be maintained. At some point, there will be no money for future teachers. The PERS contract by union agreement will be a disaster, and the politicians signing off on it I bet got boatloads on money for their election campaigns.
Politicians can be bought unlike a corporate owner who has a bottom line.