A Faustian Bargain for State Pension Plans

Rick Thorne worked as a school custodian in Chelmsford, Mass., for more than two decades, earning $20 an hour cleaning floors, cutting grass, and setting up for assemblies. In June 2011 the 5,500-student school system fired Thorne and other staff and outsourced its custodial work.

In came Aramark, a food-service and facilities-management company based in Philadelphia, to clean the town’s seven schools for $841,000 a year. That’s about one-third less than the lowest offer from Thorne’s union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 1703. Aramark, which has a long history of battles with organized labor, offered Thorne and other staff their jobs back at an average of $8.50 an hour. They declined. “I was like family. I knew all the kids,” says Thorne, 55, who’s still unemployed and living off his monthly $1,500 pension check. Aramark spokesman Thomas Sueta declined to comment.