Pondering the Pension Penalty
At the August Local 308 Board of Executioners meeting, VP Mark Weems announced that discussions to lower the penalty from 5% to 1% are going on at the Pension Board. According to Subsection 2 in Section 10 of the Pension Code , the penalty is a stupid rule applied to those of us who were hired after September 2001. Even if we have 26 years of service, we still have to wait until age 65 to receive full retiree pension payments. In the Pension Code, the penalty is described as a “reduced pension.” If this goes through—and no other concessions were made in secret—we are looking at a much lower hit for retiring before age 64. Although it does nothing to solve the underfunding problem and , I think this is positive. What about you? There are some details about the three tiers for retirement you should know from the pension FAQ website : If you were hired Full-Time Permanent before September 5, 2001: Unreduced pension at any age if the employee retires on or after the first ...
