CTA Union's Sweet Deal
I am certain that CTA union officials must be smiling. 
Even thought the Chicago Sun-Times reported Thursday,
”The bottom line for CTA unions is an agreement that would force bus drivers and motormen to lose money during the first year, break even in the second and finally start making money in the third year,"employees are being called to contribute only 3% toward retiree health care and 6% toward their pensions (up from 3%).
Talking to a former NICOR union vice president last Saturday, I learned that Northern Illinois Gas union employees pay 40% of their health care costs.Paying 40% is a real incentive not to misuse health care.
The coming Chicago Transit Authority’s 3% isn’t.
Notice the pension plan doesn’t look like the private sector’s norm—a 401(k). It’s still a defined benefit plan.
And the pension plan was what the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 241 wanted to save.
The Sun-Times reports its president, Darrell Jefferson, said,
The CTA still wants McHenry and other collar county residents to double the amount of sales tax (from one-quarter of one percent to one-half of one percent) to the Regional Transportation Authority."We’re living in a time now when pension plans are being crashed instead of being brought back to life. I think we’ve done a remarkable thing here.”
Maybe you won’t notice the difference at the cash register, but I’ll bet you the extra money does not get spent in McHenry County.
And will it pass?
Former Jacksonville State Representative Jim Reilly, now head of the RTA, “predicted that the sales tax hike could attract ‘extraordinary majorities in both houses’ needed to override a veto.”
More on the weekend on McHenry County Blog.
2 comments:
Couldn't the Republican Party in Illinois actually stand for something if they would agree to
1) Move Pensions to definied contribution from Defined Benefit
2) Institute student funding rather than teacher funding of education
3) Privatize a good portion of the Illinois transportation infrastructure.
Simple as 1-2-3?
JBP
You're misreading the details, although its not surprising that the unions would downplay this issue. As I read it, active employees would pay 3% of their salary towards FUTURE retirement health care. The actual current costs of retiree health care, "would be self-sustaining through investments and contributions from both active employees [the 3% you mention], retirees and their dependents." It's that last part, I am sure, that your NICOR friend is referring to, and this one is going to have to be similar. There's no way to run a "self-sustaining trust" that doesn't have contributions in that range, and I bet if you do some digging you will find that to be the case.
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