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:

1. Unreduced pension at any age if the employee retires on or after the first of the month after completion of 25 years of continuous service (Plan Section 10.2)
2. Reduced pension after age 55 upon completion of 3 years of continuous service (Plan Section 10.1)

If you were hired Full-Time Permanent after September 5,  2001 but before January 8, 2008:

1. Unreduced pension if the employee retires on or after the first of the month after age 55 with 25 years of continuous service
2. Reduced pension after age 55 upon completion of 3 years of continuous service (Plan Section 10.1)

If you were hired Full-Time Permanent on or after January 8, 2008:

1. Unreduced pension if the employee retires on or after the first of the month after age 64 with 25 years of continuous service. (Plan Section 10.2)
2. Reduced pension after age 55 upon completion of 10 years of continuous service (Plan Section 10.1)

Also learn more about the seedy corruption involved in raiding our pension in this article by Brother David Marden: 

Bailing Out The Bosses