Thread: Bloomberg Cuts Pension Benefits, Raises Retirement Age

IT BEGINS: Bloomberg Unveils His Plans To Slash Benefits, And Raise The Retirement Age

Gus Lubin
Feb. 3, 2011, 7:52 AM
comment 24

New York City's pension was on track to run out of money in ten years. Thus no one is surprised that Bloomberg has proposed for major reform.

The key changes include raising the retirement age from 57 to 65.

He also wants to up the minimum term of employment from 5 to 10 years.

Additionally he would proscribe practices like adding accumulated overtime to final year pay to boost pension benefits.

The first two changes are constitutionally protected and require support from the state. Normally this would be unlikely, but in 2011 there's a pension crisis everywhere from Albany to Greece.

Here are the full details from the Mayor's press office, via the NYT:

CIVILIANS AND TEACHERS

Retirement Age/Vesting

· New Tier: Newly hired civilians and teachers will vest after 10 years of city employment and will be eligible to receive pension checks at age 65.

· Current: Most employees can vest after five years. Retirement ages vary, but are generally age 57 for civilians and as low as 55 for teachers with 27 years’ experience.

Employee Contributions

· New Tier: Civilian employees and teachers will contribute 5 percent of their salary in all years of employment.

· Current: Civilians contribute 4.85 percent for the first 10 years, dropping to 1.85 percent for the next 20 years. Teachers contribute 4.85 percent for the first 27 years, dropping to 1.85 percent thereafter.

Final Salary Calculation

· New Tier: Overtime does not count toward final salary calculation.

· Current: Overtime does count toward final salary calculation.

Teachers Tax-Deferred Annuity

· New Tier: Elimination of fixed-return option for Teachers’ Tax-Deferred Annuity (will be fixed at 0 percent going forward, immediately, for all participating members).

· Current: 7 percent guaranteed rate of return.


UNIFORMED WORKERS

New uniformed employees of the Correction and Sanitation Departments, along with new members of the Police and Fire Departments, will be covered by the “Tier 3â€

Still don't see how those plans will make any real difference. As long as they don't change current pension plans for current workers it will still collapse. They cannot hire enough new workers to keep the payments up. Its simple math.

Some harsh changes will be comming for pension plans unless the feds bail out every single state pension plan. There needs to be a law passed that the feds are not allowed to bail out state pension plans thus making states accountable for them entirely.

The politicians must not waste our money. Instead of increasing our retirement age, they must not touch our social security trust fund. The politicians always get money from that trust fund and spend it on special projects. They must stop using our social security trust fund: THAT MONEY IS FOR OUR RETIREMENT. DO NOT TOUCH IT. And this is also true in the Federal government. If politicians do not use that trust fund, we will not have to increase our retirement age. And we will not have to talk about fixing our social security system. The politicians are the ones who create our present problems. Let's vote out all the bad politicians.

The retirement age they are talking of is for public pensions for public government jobs. As it stands now most can retire and collect at the age of 50 for the rest of their lives. The pensions can start after only working 5 years as well. Longer you work the more you get paid. So basically work from the age of 30-50 and get full pension at 20 years. Then collect full pension based on last years salary for the rest of ones life estimating 80-85 for remainder of life. So worked for 20 years to collect for 30-35 years and at the wage of final year.

An extra kicker is being allowed to save vacation and sick days and last year cashing out all those days on retirement day getting basically an extra months of pay assuming 3 weeks of vacation and 1 week of sick days a year and can acrue over a few years your talking an extra 2-3 months pay making your final year a 15 month pay year raising your 85k a year salary to over 100k a year retirement.

Anyways this isn't about SS but I agree with yah there. Its about public job Unions.