California pension reformers are seeking to qualify a 2016 ballot measure to give state and local governments the option of placing new employees in 401(k)-style retirement plans.

Unions for government employees and teachers, who want to keep existing pensions, have deployed “truth squads” to fight this proposed reform. They vow to spend whatever it takes to defeat the measure.

But the union bosses, themselves, are not telling the truth.

The reality is that many of California’s most militant and powerful government unions provide their own employees with the same kind of 401(k) plans they are now attacking.