From Socialist Worker: http://socialistworker.org/2014/01/09/grand-theft-pension-reform
Gutting pensions is part of a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top.
January 9, 2014
“PEOPLE ARE feeling like they’re just violated–like someone stole their money for retirement.”
So said JoAnn Washington-Murry, a 60-year-old child welfare specialist who has worked for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services for almost 20 years. She saw her whole future thrown into question–by pension “reform.”
Weeks before the Christmas holiday last month, Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn turned his back on union supporters who got him elected and signed one of the most comprehensive pieces of pension “reform” legislation in the country.
Or more accurately, pension deform. Based on projected retirement benefits for state workers with 25 years of service under the deformed system, Washington-Murry will receive $30,000 less over the next 18 years than she would have under the old plan.
Washington-Murry told an Associated Press reporter that she had planned for her retirement under the current pension system “It’s just really scary right now to think about how we’re going to do this,” she said. “We might need to start looking now for another home, or I can keep working until the mortgage is paid.”
Illinois–dominated by the Democrats, and despite a clause in its constitution stating that pension benefits “shall not be diminished or impaired”–may be leading the way, but it isn’t alone.
The anxieties JoAnn Washington-Murry is experiencing are being repeated again and again, in states and cities across the country. Everywhere–whether it’s Republicans in charge, blaming “overpaid” public employees or Democrats claiming we “all” need to sacrifice–the “pension crisis” has become the excuse to raise the retirement age, impose a cap on retirement benefits, reduce cost-of-living adjustments and increase employee contributions.
In Detroit, where the average annual pension payment to retired city workers is just $19,000, city officials cited $3.5 billion in unfunded pension costs as one of main reason for declaring bankruptcy. When Central Falls, R.I., declared bankruptcy in 2011, some city workers had their pension benefits slashed by more than half.
Continue reading at: http://socialistworker.org/2014/01/09/grand-theft-pension-reform
