In today’s Times report on the reaction of municipal labor unions to possible budget-cutting strategies, UFT President Randi Weingarten argues against any reform of generous pension benefits for municipal employees:
“Here we have a situation where the gazillionaires have created a mortgage crisis and credit crisis, and a lot of well-off people have benefited. And so it would be dead wrong to ask workers who average pensions of $19,000 a year to be sacrificed.”
In fact: (a) under Article V, Section 7 of the State Constitution, pension benefits cannot be “diminished or impaired” for any current member of a public retirement system in New York, meaning that reforms could only be targeted at newly hired employees, and (b) the average city pension is a lot higher than $19,000 a year.
Take members of Ms. Weingarten’s own union, the United Federation of Teachers, for example. Excluding death benefits and disability payments, the average “service retirement” allowance for retired city teachers was $44,612 as of as of June 30, 2007, according to the annual report of the New York City Teachers Retirement System (NYCTRS). The further breakdown by sex: retired male teachers receive pensions averaging $53,931, while retired women averaged $40,117, presumably because they typically worked fewer years and amassed less seniority. (For details, see the data table on page 27 of the NYCTRS report.)
Among the most recent group of teacher retirees—those aged 55 to 59—the average pension came to $64,007 for men and $56,170 for women. These figures do not include additional retirement income available to teachers through the tax-deferred annuity program in which many NYCTRS members also participate.
Most city employees, including lower-paid non-professionals, belong to the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS). The 4,235 members of NYCERS who retired in 2006 received an average service retirement allowance of $31,199, or 50 percent of their final average salary, according to the system’s annual report (see table on page 173). The average retirement allowance for all NYCRS members—including those who retired many years ago, as well as individuals who spent only a portion of their careers on the city payroll — was $22,606 (see table on page 163 of the report).
The city’s total contribution to its employees’ pension funds has risen from $1.1 billion in fiscal 2001 to a projected $6.3 billion in fiscal 2009. Most of that growth in cost in recent years has been covered by the growth in business and income taxes generated by securities firms and their clients. In effect, active and retired municipal employees have shared a portion of the profits of the “gazillionaires” Ms. Weingarten blames for the financial crisis.
Needless to say, the easy-money days are now over – and not just for investment bankers.
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