No sympathy for public employees
Responding to Stephen Irmick’s letter to the editor regarding complaints about pension funds. I would like to ask Stephen what exactly is the “large percentage” of state employee pension funds that the employees are paying?
As I recall, they contribute 9 percent of their salaries to the pension funds. How exactly does that constitute a large percentage? They pay no Social Security or Medicare taxes. Additionally, many get health insurance coverage at no or low cost vs. the average private-sector employee.
These pensions are also “guaranteed” by state constitutions and are supposedly inviolable. Upon retirement at age 50 or 55 depending on what sector you actually work for, you are guaranteed from 75-100 percent of your preretirement salary. For many, those salaries are “spiked” in the last few years of service to enhance the actual pension amount. How many of your neighbors, families and friends get the same sweet deal in the private sector?
Additionally, we have been told that Social Security will not cover us fully in retirement so we must “make up” that shortfall with savings out of our pockets.
We have seen continued tinkering with Social Security payouts, no raises this year or last to current recipients, plus the continued increase in age requirement to attain full benefit payments, regardless of how long one has paid into the system.
Couple that with the knowledge that future generations will see decreasing benefits and it’s hard to find any sympathy for public sector (union) workers. A look at the property tax bill shows several line items for the various agencies, districts and townships to cover retirement costs. I do not see the same line items in the Social Security statements indicating “contributions” by public sector workers to our retirement.
The taxpayers did not create the issues regarding pension funding, nor did we vote to approve the overly generous payments and pension spiking that have been the norm for the past several decades. But once again, we are the ones being forced to foot the bill.
Cindy Bandur
Island Lake