Opposing Governor Andrew Cuomo’s pension plan is about to come to Zuccotti Park.
One of New York’s public employee unions, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is holding a “Tier It Down!” rally tomorrow afternoon against Governor Cuomo’s “Tier 6″ proposal, where new employees would receive scaled down pension benefits in an effort to curb costs. Read More
It’s beginning to look a lot like budget season.
The AFL-CIO went on the air today with a new ad blasting Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Albany lawmakers for their efforts to add a sixth tier to the pension system, and blaming the effort on Wall Street fat cats who, the ad states, propelled Mr. Cuomo into office.
“They crashed our economy. We bailed them out. Now Wall Street, big banks and corporate CEO’s have teamed up with some politicians in Albany to slash pensions of working New Yorkers by 40 percent,” the narrator intones.
The ad conflates a bit two separate problems with the state’s pension system–on the one side, the pension fund is suffering due to the crash of the economy, but it is not quite accurate to say that because of that Mr. Cuomo and others who are pushing for reform are only doing so because of the crash. In fact, they often point out that the health of the pension fund isn’t so much a short-term as it is a long-term problem. Read More
City Comptroller John Liu — who worked out with New York City firemen Saturday yesterday and donned a helmet at their conference today – got a standing ovation when he vowed to protect union pension benefits.
Liu, who is likely to run for mayor in 2013, told the audience gathered at the Hilton this morning, “There are some people in New York City and across the country who have talked about how we can’t uphold the deal we made with our workers.” Read More
