Guest Blogger: Wall Street Gamblers Hurt Our Pension

Guest Blog by David Marden 

The CTA pension tragedy is a classic case of Wall Street screwing the little guy. 

Discovered through multiple SEC investigations, Gray & Company borrowed money thinking they could beat the market with CTA's pension. Well, they lost. 

This cost the CTA a few billion dollars. Gray & Company kept their jobs and six figure salaries.

The CTA mismanagers that decided to work with Gray & Company, kept their jobs while the CTA worker gets majorly screwed with 14% coming out of their checks. So someone at 70% maximum pay (about $30.84/hour) or $60,000 per year. This is paying about $8,500 per year to subsidize this idiocy. 

We have let the CTA management and political appointees like Valerie Jarrett take from our pension with impunity.  They are giving out lifetime pensions starting at age 50 for someone serving part time board position. Our union leadership needs to demand that the CTA management fill the missing money NOT charge the lowest paid employees 14% of their gross salary. 

Let's call these people out! Political appointees working a few days a week and now getting full time pensions,  while someone making $30/hr is giving up 14%.

Our unions should generate a list of the biggest takers: Those who have taken the most while contributing the least. 

A pension is designed to provide a stable income and quality of life for those that work hard and NEED the money. It has been hijacked by political appointees and the shortages are actually paid by those who need it the most. 

The CTA did stop those bogus pensions but there are people grandfathered in that cost the system way more. 

The CTA worker is now making $51,000 before taxes. They can't even take a sick day (recently, my pregnant wife had to take our six year old to emergency room for broken arm yesterday.  Sucks to not have a sick day and worry about being penalized from my employer for accidents).

I'm wondering how we can get it fixed—or at least make sure it does not get worse and they start charging more. That's a lot of money to absorb for someone making $60,000.

In year two of Full-Time Permanent employment, you actually make less money with the pension deduction. This is an awful thing to our fellow employees making the least amount of money.

It seems that this has been happening for a while. Examine this report from the State of Illinois Auditor General:  

We should file lawsuit against the CTA based on this premise:

We were told 2:1 ratio of matching but thats not the truth. We pay 13.79% and the CTA pays 21% which is a 1.5:1. It is actually worse because the CTA is using 6% of that to cover debt from the bad investments. This is an estimated 8.25% return when they only averaged 6.4% for the last 10 years (the state pension actually requires a 2:1 requirement, but allows 5% to pay towards the bad debt). So things will get worse unless the CTA pitches in more. 

We have been lied to by the ATU officials who claim that the CTA matches $2 for every $1. I believe we are much better off with a 401k match. 

The opinions expressed by guest bloggers here or in Shop Talk newsletter are not necessarily the opinion or sanctioned policies and actions by Brother Eric Curtis Muhammad Basir, ATU Local 308 members, elected leadership or stewards. In the spirit of the First Amendment and the ATU Obligation, all CTA workers and supporters are welcome to submit content of any point-of-view for this blog. Real identities will be hidden upon request.