Pension cuts will hurt Chicago employees, retirees

Active and retired Chicago city workers will suffer if a pension-cutting bill that sharply reduces retiree COLAs and hikes employee contributions becomes law. The legislation was approved this week in the Illinois General Assembly and now goes to Governor Quinn. Our union and the We Are One Chicago coalition are urging the governor to veto it.

"The pension-cutting legislation backed by the Emanuel Administration would unfairly harm some 50,000 employees and retirees who participate in the city's Municipal Retirement Fund," AFSCME Council 31 executive director Henry Bayer wrote at the Huffington Post:

These are the lowest-paid city workers, including library employees, food-service and janitorial workers in city schools, health care employees, clerical workers and others.

Their average pension today is just $33,000 a year. They aren't eligible for Social Security, so this modest amount is their primary and often only source of income in retirement. And with the city already moving to eliminate their retiree health insurance, many low-income retired city workers are struggling even now to make ends meet.

Under the administration's proposal, the value of the average retiree's $33,000 pension would erode over two decades of retirement to barely $22,000 -- and keep dropping from there. It's uncertain how an 85-year-old retiree could get by on so little, and it's unjust to demand that they do so.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Union members are speaking out, too. AFSCME retiree sub-chapter president Mary Jones and Alma Wingard, also a retired library employee, told their stories to ABC-7 and Fox-32:

Watch the video above or at this link, then share this article with your friends and call the governor at 312-814-2121 to ask him to veto the pension bill.