Temporary reprieve on benefit cuts
AFSCME members in state government and at state universities were threatened with a real double whammy in the General Assembly last week.
A very strong rumor—and a related “shell” bill—emerged that indicated House Speaker Michael Madigan intended to push for passage of legislation that would take away the right to bargain over health care benefits. That measure supposedly would have given the governor sole authority to determine how much employees would have to pay toward their health care coverage.
AFSCME lobbyists, backed up by local union leaders across the state, faced a tough challenge—lobbying against a bill that didn’t even exist yet. But, given that legislative rules allow a bill to move through both houses in a matter of 48 hours, they couldn’t let that stop them. So the Union contacted legislators to urge them to oppose any bill that would take away the right to bargain over health care. At week’s end, no such legislation had been introduced. But we can’t rest easy at this point, as the rumors continue to circulate and the threat remains a real one.
Speaker Madigan took more direct action on the matter of public employee pensions, introducing four amendments that would have devastated the pensions that employees in SERS, SURS, and TRS paid into and toiled for years to earn. The amendments were as follows:
- House Bill 1154, Amendment 1: Completely eliminates cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). This leaves senior citizens defenseless against inflation.
- House Bill 1154, Amendment 2: Eliminates COLAs unless an individual system reaches 80 percent funded. Thanks to the state’s fiscal irresponsibility in underfunding the pension systems, this amendment effectively also eliminates COLAs for a generation of retirees since the systems are not projected to reach 80 percent until the 2040s.
- House Bill 1165, Amendment 1: Broadly and immediately raises retirement age to 67. There is no graduated phase-in for older workers, no consideration of the hard labor performed by many public workers in physically strenuous jobs – like public safety officers, corrections officers, and nurses to name a few.
- House Bill 1166, Amendment 1: Increase employee contributions by 5 percent. This is well over the 2 percent increase offered by the coalition that is strictly contingent on a balanced solution that includes an ironclad funding guarantee and revenue. A 5 percent increase would result in Illinois systems having the second-highest employee contribution rate in the nation, according to a Boston College survey.
The We Are One Illinois union coalition immediately went into action to generate opposition to all of these amendments. And by the time they were called for a vote in the House Pension Committee on Thursday, that effort had succeeded: Every one of the proposed amendments was defeated by a wide margin.
But the threat to pension benefits is far from over. Last week Democrats and Republicans joined together to introduce HB 3411 (known as the NBC bill for its sponsors—Rep. Nekritz, Sen. Biss and Rep. Cross), legislation that incorporates a number of the harmful pension changes from previous bills. Speaker Madigan’s office has indicated this measure could be called for a vote at any time. So AFSCME members should continue to urge their state legislators not to vote for any bill unless it has developed in cooperation with the We Are One Illinois coalition.
Thus far, only SB 2404 contains pension changes that the union coalition supports: an ironclad guarantee that the employer will make its contributions; the establishment of a “pension stabilization fund” to specifically direct additional state funding to pension funds; no changes to the pensions of current retirees; and an increased contribution of 2 percent from current employees.