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COMMUNICATOR HOMEPAGE
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| Extra pension credit overdue To the Editor: It is my humble opinion that the union should have acted much sooner and got the bill passed to provide additional service credit to employees who contributed more than 10 years to the state retirement system. Nearly two years have elapsed since the law passed limiting retirement contributions to a maximum of 10 years. Many employees, who made excess contributions to the system, have already retired from state service during those two years and many others still in service are about to retire as well. Everyone who made excess contributions to the retirement system (both retired employees and those who are still in service) should get appropriate service credit to receive their deserved extra pensions benefits. If this is not possible, it is only fair to refund all the employees’ excess contributions with reasonable interest. High priority should be given to resolving this issue. K.N. BALAKRISHNAN New York Members want pension justice To the Editor: Where is the concern, the outrage over the treatment of us in pension Tiers 3 and 4 who were hired between July ’76 and October ’90? We had thousands of dollars withheld from our paychecks in excess of the recent 10-year cap on retirement contributions. To date, no reasonable remedy has been proposed. Instead, Tier 1 and 2 members considering retirement have, ironically, been given a bonus of up to 4 percent extra. The silence about this injustice is deafening. Is PEF fighting for us? Surely, the same goals of equity and parity that drive PEF to prioritize the restoration of sick leave accruals for some members should cause our representatives to press for compensations. How can it be considered fair or equitable that an employee who has contributed 3 percent of his salary for 24 years will receive the same level of benefits as one who has contributed for 10 years? Either our retirement package should be substantially improved, or the overage withheld should be returned. If PEF is truly a union that is comprised of equals, this sort of gross inequity cannot stand. ROBERT MARKHAM and 24 others Editor’s note: This issue is a priority for PEF and is included in PEF’s Legislative Agenda, which is distributed to all state lawmakers. PEF took the lead on this issue and worked with other public-employee unions to get a bill introduced in the Legislature in 2001 that would give public employees hired between July 1976 and October 1990 one additional month of service credit for every year of service. This bill was reintroduced in 2002 and PEF is now working to have it reintroduced in 2003. At the 2002 PEF Convention, delegates voted to seek two months of credit, instead of just one, and the 2003 PEF Legislative Agenda reflects that. Professionals paid too little To the Editor: We have been teachers in the state Office of Mental Health system for more than 25 years. Our salaries are well below those of our public school counterparts. We work with individuals the public schools and BOCES cannot deal with and we do it at half the salary. When is the state going to recognize that state salaries for teachers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, audiologists and pharmacists, among others, are incredibly out-of-date? A recent Newsday article mentioned a 28-year-old teacher on Long Island who wants to know how to invest her $60,000 annual salary. We were to receive a geographic pay increase, similar to those for nurses in the system, but after years of sending up local teacher pay schedules, this has never come to fruition. We also receive less personal time than other state workers. We get 24 hours of personal time, compared to the 40 hours of everyone else in the system. When we inquired about this inequity, we were told that it is a negotiated item in the contract. Even as 10-month employees we should be entitled to 32 hours. We are not asking for parity with the public school system, but we are asking the Department of Civil Service to step into the realm of reality concerning compensation for professional titles. PHYLLIS MARCH, JEANNE MURPHY and ELIZABETH ROBERTS West Brentwood The Communicator Letters policy We welcome letters to the editor about union issues and events relevant to PEF's diverse membership. All letters are subject to editing for space, fairness and good taste. Please keep them brief (up to one page, double-spaced or a maximum of 250 words), and please include your name and phone number for verification. Send letters to: The Communicator Public Employees Federation P.O. Box 12414 Albany, N.Y. 12212-2414 email Denyce Duncan Lacy, Executive Editor The Communicator - Director of Public Relations dduncanlacy@pef.org Sherry Halbrook, Editor of The Communicator- shalbrook@pef.org |
