Fear now grips me and many others today because Detroit is allowed to shed its obligations, including pensions, in bankruptcy. JP Massers fine diary is not to be missed.
However, it's not just those pensioners and current public employees who are screwed by todays ruling; it's every single former and current public employee in the entire country. Those already retired on a pension could lose theirs should the city, county, town or state they gave decades of their lives to decide it's easier to balance their budgets by just declaring bankruptcy, shedding ALL their debt, and starting over again. And it's not like we can just pick ourselves up and go get a job. We're old and often limited in our physical capabilities (right now I'm trying to self-heal severe back pain that has limited my ability to sit, stand or even lay down for almost a week).
Ditto those hard at work today who are closing in on a retirement they were promised when they signed on to work for a public employer. They're screwed, too. And then there are those who have more than 10 years in service who will lose out, too.
We knew it would be hard working for the public. Wages for the last 10-20 years have sucked as salary increases were given up to maintain retirement benefits. The work has been hard since budgetary concerns delay or even close off hiring replacement employees when someone retires or resigns. You might find yourself doing the job of 2 or 3 others throughout your career.
There's no bonus at the end of the year if you work for the public. No way, no how. My sister often teased me that here I was, an RN with a degree and no bonus while she, who never graduated from high school (yes, she regrets that) makes toilet seats and gets a yearly bonus. My cousin, too, a cleaning lady, always got about a grand a year. Sweet. But I knew what I was getting into when I signed on.
No holiday pay either. Yes, you do get an extra day off if it can be "worked in" to the work schedule by your supervisor, but often it can't because staffing is short. Most of my career I worked nearly every holiday. For straight time. No complaints because it's my profession and we don't close up for weekends or holidays.
And then there's the derision you get from "taxpayers". Yup. The "I pay your salary" BS along with the usual (and dead wrong) accusations of being "lazy", "overpaid", "greedy", and having too many extravagant benefits - generally played again and again in our media when union contracts were being renegotiated. Well, that too was part of what I signed up for.
We put up with it all because we knew we'd be compensated for our decades of hard work, working on holidays, dealing with public insults, and compensating for short staffing by a pension and, sometimes, health insurance when we retired. The pension wasn't lavish, but sufficient for a decent and secure retirement.
And now that seems to be going the way of the dinosaur.
My own union had to surrender health insurance for future retirees in 1992 after giving up much of would have been salary increases for about 10 years. The costs, we knew, were going up. In 1992, Milwaukee County wouldn't negotiate it in anymore. Anyone hired after 1992 would not have health insurance when they retired. A sad day. I remember the discussion of the contract and the bitterness of many. I voted against the new contract because of that provision. I don't think you sell out the new folks just to keep something for everyone else. The new contract passed.
In the next decade, those "new" folks will be retiring without health insurance. Fortunately, the ACA exchanges will make it easier for them to get insurance, but that insurance will take money out of their pensions. And those pensions got smaller when Milwaukee County tried to change the pension formula, but the courts stepped in to say they couldn't.
After giving up so much for so long to keep benefits, by the time I retired my wages were $5 - 7 less than they were in the private sector. Because of the lower salary, my pension was smaller than it should have been. Fortunately, this year I started getting Social Security and that has made life much easier.
But Social Security is now under attack as banks and Wall Street would love to get their greedy mitts around all that money. Their clout (an army of lobbyists with fist fulls of payola for compliant politicians) may one day trump the polls that show the vast majority of Americans who strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. After all, most Americans don't have the resources to donate to campaigns or run attack ads against politicians willing to throw seniors under the bus in order to grab more campaign cash.
So, here we are now. Detroit can shed its pension obligations with the stroke of a pen. Any state, city or county can now do the same. They can do what they have been unable to do through contract negotiations: Get rid of their pension obligations.
I'm scared. I think all current and retired public employees are. It's not like we can just take our broken bodies out and look for a new job.
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