UPDATED: Retirement Disincentive, Part II?

UPDATED 5/15

It took some digging, but I finally found  a definitive answer about whether those who retire AFTER June 30, 2014 will receive a pension based on the 4+4 that is not being paid out in full to in service members until 2020:

Pending ratification, the contract provides that members who retire on or before June 30, 2014, will receive payment in full for the retroactive raises in one lump sum. Members who retire on or after July 1, 2014, will be paid the retroactive money on the same schedule as in-service members: beginning Oct. 1, 2015, and ending Oct. 1, 2020. In both cases, the pension calculation at the time of retirement will include the entire 8 percent rate increase arising from 2009 and 2010 and any other pay increases that occurred during a member’s employment.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Something just struck me about the way the proposed UFT contract deals with retirement. I hope I am wrong--if anyone knows, please reply in the comments.

Yesterday, I posted how someone like myself, or anyone else set to retire in the next few years, will have to wait for retro pay as if we were in service, thus creating a disincentive to retire. The more I thought about it, the worse it became. You see, pension is based on your FAS, or Final Average Salary, which is generally the average of your salary for the final three years you worked. Here's what the union's FAQ says about that:

You will receive your full retroactive pay in a lump sum only if you retire on or before June 30, 2014. If you retire after that date, you will receive your retroactive pay on the same schedule as in-service employees. Retroactive raises would be included in the calculation of final average salary.

OK...that's fine if you've already retired. But what if, like me, you're eligible to retire AFTER June 30? What exactly does this line mean: Retroactive raises would be included in the calculation of final average salary.?

So if you retire before June 30 and your FAS is 100K (which is likely, since that's the highest salary), then your retirement benefits will be increased to reflect the retro money, i.e., your FAS will be 108K. This will increase one's pension about 4K a year (50% of the 8K). That's great.

But if you retire AFTER June 30? That part is unclear. Yes, you will receive the retro money over time like everyone else. But how will your pension be calculated? Will your FAS be 100K or 108K?

It's not a small question. That 4K difference would add up to a LOT of money over time. A person enjoying a 25 year retirement would enjoy it a whole lot less, because they would lose 100K over that time period.

So, does anyone know the answer? For those of us who must retire after June 30, will the retro be figured into the FAS? Or will we be screwed out of the money?

Retirement Disincentive

Before the proposed UFT contract came out, there were whispers that may the city would offer retirement credit instead of retro money. This made sense, because the extra credit would allow teachers to retire in droves, saving the city a bundle in salary. So, of course, this is not what happened.

Instead, when the contract was first announced, there were other whispers that anyone who chose to retire before July 1, 2015 would get the retro money in a lump sum payment instead of having to wait 5 years after their retirements. This would have caused people like myself to retire, saving the city money without having to give pension credit. This also made sense, so, of course, this is not what happened, either.

Here is what did happen, according the UFT site:
Those who retire on or before June 30, 2014 will receive full retroactive pay for time worked in a lump sum. Those who retire after June 30, 2014 and employees who have been continuously employed and are in active service as of the date of the payout will receive retroactive pay in five lump-sum payments of roughly 12.5 percent in October 2015, 12.5 percent in October 2017, 25 percent in October 2018, 25 percent in October 2019 and 25 percent in October 2020.

The problem for people like myself is that I was born in the summer, and so I won't have the age to retire for a few months after the deadline. Something tells me that putting in my papers before the deadline won't count, even though I've had my final consultation.

Speaking of which, given the time constraints, how many people will be able to retire in time to grab that lump sum? I'd be willing to bet that all the slots for final consultations were filled long ago, so the only people who will end up retiring this year will be the ones who already intended to. So instead of giving the highest salaried teachers a reason to retire, the city and UFT have actually created a retirement disincentive--we may as well hang around long enough to get the higher final average salary upon which our retirement allowance is based.

What the city and UFT should have done was agree that anyone retiring before 2020 would receive whatever retro they were owed in a lump sum upon retirement. That would give the highest salaried teachers an incentive to leave, thus saving the city money.

I was already ambivalent about retiring this year. The prospect of getting the retro money up front really pushed me towards the door. Now, I'm not so sure.

"No" Problem

The sentiments on the blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook regarding the proposed new contract are pretty clear. Most members don't like this contract proposal. I don't either, and the main reason for my disdain is the treatment of ATRs. If unions don't protect their weakest members, what good are they?

To be honest, if not for the ATR proposal, which will lead to the termination of many fine teachers, I would likely vote in favor of this contract. Not because I like it, but I know that voting no presents a problem.

The last, and only, time teachers voted down a contract was in 1995. Being an old timer, I remember when this happened. If you want all the details, you can read Kit Wainer's account on the Ed Notes blog. The tl;dr  of it is simply this: We voted down the contract, and were given another proposal that was only slightly less odious than the one we turned down. It sailed through the second time.

The current proposal faces the same "No" problem. If we vote it down, what will be the outcome? Will we get more money? I doubt it. Maybe the city would agree to move one of the retro payments up a year, or the $1000 signing bribe would become a $1200 signing bribe, but that would be about all we'd get. And the revised contract would sail through, just as it did in 1995.

I'm not advising anyone to vote yes for this proposal. I still intend to vote NO myself. But let's not kid ourselves. Voting down this proposal will not save the ATRs because most teachers don't even know what an ATR is, much less give a damn about saving them. The main concern of most teachers is their own pocketbooks (and in this economic environment, who can blame them?)

So by all means, vote no if that's how you feel, and I hope that is how you feel. But let's not kid ourselves about what the upshot would be. We'd be drawn and quartered in the press, and we'd end up settling for a contract that isn't a whole lot better than the one we're looking at now.

REVISED! Lose Just 9K, Plus Interest, With New Contract!

As I said, I am no math teacher, so I promised to gladly revise my numbers on the new contract if someone could show where I erred. JD2718 did just that, by showing that I neglected to take into account the retro payments the UFT promised for the years 2015-2020. Being a reader of JD's blog, I know he is a math whiz, and I refer my readers to his excellent post on the contract numbers.

Even so, I did show that a teacher at the top of the scale would lose 57K in salary while receiving far less in retro, for a difference of 9K. Even JD has not accounted for the 9K we are losing. I suspect, as a non-math teacher, that it is due to compounding, or voodoo, or possibly tree gnomes.

In any case, the 57K difference that I calculated has real consequences, because had we been given the money on time, we'd have been able to sock much of it away in TDA, which pays 7%, or some other investment which would have earned us more money than we are going to get.

In all likelihood, I'd have spent a fair amount of that money on Girl Scout Cookies, so this contract also hurts another great American institution.

I will delete my prior post, as I don't want to mislead anyone as to the real numbers. I will, however, repost the chart I made before to show where the shortfall comes from. Thanks JD, and if we ever meet, the Girl Scout Thin Mints are on me.

Salary Year	Raise	Salary with Frontloading	Raise	Salary with Backloading	Annual Loss
2009-10	4%	$104000	0%	$100000	$4000
2010-11	4%	$108160	0%	$100000	$8160
2011-12	0%	$108160	0%	$100000	$8160
2012-13	0%	$108160	0%	$100000	$8160
2013-14	1%	$109241	1%	$101000	$8241
2014-15	1%	$110333	1%	$102100	$8233
2015-16	1%	$111436	3%	$105163	$6273
2016-17	1.5%	$113107	3.5	$108843	$4264
2017-18	2.5%	$115934	4.5	$113740	$2194
2018-19	3%	$119412	5	$119427	-$15

Mr. Talk Weighs In on the Contract

Now that the new proposed contract has been analyzed (and given the stamp of approval by the New York Post), the REAL question that I'm sure has been burning in your minds bobs to the surface, namely:

What does Mr. Talk think about all this?

I'm glad you asked. Personally, I think it's great for people like me who are on the verge of retirement. We get to walk out the door with a decent increase and we will receive our retroactive payments immediately, unlike the vast majority of teachers who can't retire and will have to wait until 2020 to get all the money that Bloomberg stiffed us on.

I'm still voting no.

I'd vote no for any contract that sells out our members, and this one hangs the ATRs out to dry. There was no reason why ATRs couldn't have simply been sent back to the classroom and evaluated based upon the same criteria as the rest of us. Instead, the UFT decided to make it relatively easy to fire ATRs at the whim of principals who don't want to have a veteran's salary on their payroll.

There's lots more not to like here. The retro pay really isn't retro pay: if you get paid more in future years, that's a raise, not retro. Unless you retire, you will have to work another four years to see all that money. I hate the de facto merit pay and the stealth charter schools that are being created by "relaxing" contract rules (will YOUR school be chosen? Who knows?).

There are a few more things I don't like that I haven't seen discussed much elsewhere. If anyone can enlighten on these points, please do.

• It seems we will NOT be getting interest on the "retro" money. If that money had gone into our TDAs like it should have back in 2009, we'd be earning 7% on it. Instead, your "retro" money will be LOSING value because it's not earning that interest and inflation will continue to gnaw away at it before you ever see a penny. 
• While there we some adjustments made to the evaluation system, the burden of proof at a 3020 termination hearing is still on teachers. In other words, if you are found ineffective, you will have to prove, somehow, that you are not or be fired. This should have been addressed in the new contract
• Artifacts are gone. While I hate that word, artifacts were one of the few ways teachers had of demonstrating that they were effective. While I know that compiling artifacts was a pain in the ass, it at least gave us ONE way to counter bogus evaluations. Now that is gone.
• Campbell Brown and E4E both got their way in this contract. Brown has apparently succeeded in persuading the DOE that they need to get tougher with teachers who abuse children, even when there is absolutely no proof that any abuse has taken place. E4E got their merit pay. This all proves that if you have big money backing you, you can get the union to bend over.
• It appears we will all be given a "new curriculum" that we will be forced to teach, even if it stinks on ice (and it will).

The only positive things I've found in the contract are 1. that sabbaticals are apparently still in place, and 2. the 37.5 minutes of faux instruction is history (but I'm reserving judgment on this one until I see what they replace it with and how much paperwork it will involve).

So, weighing the positive against the negative, there's only one thing to do. I don't mean voting "no"--that will make no difference whatsoever as this POS contract will sail through. What you should do is retire.

That's my plan. See you in Florida.

A Tale of Two Bills and One Andy

Ever since the snow day that wasn't, I've heard lots of teachers grumbling about Mayor de Blasio. It's as if teachers were just looking for a reason to carry on the mayor bashing that became so fashionable in the Bloomberg years. For the record, I think de Blasio should have closed the schools that day, but he at least made an attempt to make an early call. It was the wrong call, but it was better than waiting until 6 AM like we used to have to do with Bloomberg.

I have been a supporter of de Blasio from the beginning, when he was considered a non-contender for the mayoral race and Mulgrew was trying to make a "king" out of Bill Thompson, the man our fearless union leader failed to support the last time around.

One of de Blasio's problems is that he is an actual progressive, not a liberal in conservative's clothing, like Governor Cuomo. When Bill takes progressive stances, he is killed in the billionaire controlled press. His biggest transgressions so far seem to have been his sneaux pas, and allowing his security people to run a stop sign.

If you only read the Post, you'd think that's all he's done. But in reality, he's championed many of the causes he said he would when he ran, despite the political price:

He stood up to Eva Mosowitz and her program of manifest destiny for charter schools. That was the correct thing to do--the only problem was he was undercut by phony Democrat Cuomo who bravely stood up for Eva and her charter school cronies who have spent freely on politicians who support them. Cuomo would probably have stood up for Hitler given enough Deutsche marks.

He pushed hard for his pre-K plan, and looked to fund it the right way--by tapping the super rich who have benefitted so lavishly from government largesse. Cuomo, of course, undercut him again, because our governor can not stand the idea of his rich pals paying even one more cent to help the downtrodden in NYC. However it turns out, it's clear that without de Blasio's passion for Pre-K, nothing would have gotten done.

He has proposed 200,000 affordable housing units to be built. He has said he would require builders to put aside affordable housing, rather than merely suggesting it, as his predecessors did.

He promised to end stop and frisk profiling that has been a blight on this city for years. He kept that promise the other day by dropping the appeal Bloomberg filed to keep stop and frisk in place. In doing this, de Blasio has gone a long way toward healing the rift between minorities and police.

He is keeping his promise to end horse carriage rides in NYC, an issue near and dear to animal advocates such as myself.

In short, de Blasio, who won an overwhelming majority of the vote while running on a progressive platform, is now being crucified by many for actually carrying out that platform.

I have no idea how our contract will turn out, but I suspect that in the end we will get something close to the 4+4 that we are asking for, along with retroactive pay in some form. That other Bill that the UFT supported--Thompson--was on record as saying the city could not afford such raises. Does anyone think we had a chance of getting them in a Thompson administration? Would that other Bill have carried out the progressive plans that de Blasio has? I doubt it. Do you think Andy Cuomo will come around and support public school teachers the way he supports Eva Moskowitz, who makes FIVE TIMES as much as the most senior teachers without ever having taught a class?

So, if you're a teacher, you should be supporting de Blasio. As a true progressive, he will not look to bust our union the way Bloomberg did, nor undermine us as Cuomo does. For those teachers who have taken to bashing de Blasio, let me ask one question. Who do you think will be a better friend to teachers? The other Bill? Sellout Andy? Joe Lhota?

I understand many of you are still honked off about having to go to work during a snow storm. Get over it. We've got a mayor who supports public schools and looks to end charters. He's union friendly. He's looking to improve education through universal Pre-K.

If teachers don't get behind de Blasio in a big way, you may just have four years of Mayor Moskowitz to look forward to soon.

Of Blessings and Health Care

I haven't been around much, I know, but it's not because I've stopped caring about education issues. It worse.

I rarely get personal here, but I wanted to give my readers and the friends I've made on this blog an explanation, and use this opportunity to vent. 

Someone very close to me has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Since he has no one else, I have become his primary caregiver. It's an exhausting job, and doesn't leave me much time to gripe about my own problems or the problems of our union, which seem infinitesimally small by comparison, at least at this time.

If you've ever cared for someone with terminal cancer, you know the deal. The weakness, the excruciating pain, the drugs, the sorrow, the hope, the million could-have-beens and never-will-be's. This person happens to be my brother, and his doctor has chosen, for whatever reason, not to give him the full prognosis. He's the only one who doesn't know he is dying. Just the stress of wearing a cheerful face when I know the ending of this story pains me more than I can say.

While I hope none of you know this from experience, the health care system in this city and country is an absolute mess. My brother had not been able to work for months prior to his diagnosis. He did not know he had cancer--he thought he had a pinched nerve that was causing him shooting pains. He couldn't find out because unemployment had forced him to drop his health care and he couldn't afford to go to a doctor. When the pain finally became too much, he asked me for help, and I brought him to the doctor. While there, an X-ray revealed the awful truth. 

He spent months in pain prior to getting diagnosed because he could not afford health care. Those months might have made the difference as to whether his cancer was terminal or treatable. Our non-existent health care system in this country made sure that he'd have to wait until his tumor became inoperable.

What I have discovered during this short and tumultuous journey is that the government doesn't care about you or me or anyone else. If you are unemployed or have no coverage in this country, the powers that be would just as soon let you die than give you help. I have spent countless thousands of dollars helping my brother simply survive because the government won't.

It took him two months to get on Medicaid. That's two months in addition to the two months he couldn't afford to get to a doctor. Those four months surely made a difference in his prognosis. If I and my wonderful wife had not been there to house him, feed him, and pay for his medications, he would surely be dead already.

It will take him 120 days to get on SSI, even though he will obviously never work again, and possibly not survive to see it. The government will get to keep all the money he contributed to Social Security in his lifetime. 

I shudder to think how many people in this country die a slow and painful death because they can't afford medications. Or how many others die because they become malnourished due to the paltry SNAP allowance--a pittance that the Republicans wish to take from the neediest of sick people. Or how many end up homeless because their disease keeps them from working but the government won't help them pay their rent.

It's a national disgrace.

I can't help but think how different things might have been if we'd had a single payer health system in this country. My brother would have gotten the treatment he needed when he needed it, and be well on his way to recovery rather than on the way to his demise.

All that being said, it had been heartening to see that there are some wonderful people in this world. I can't say enough about the wonderful people at God's Love We Deliver, a charity that helps those without income by bringing them meals. While I am of course helping my brother with food, he doesn't want to be a "burden", and so these amazing people bring him healthy, nutritious meals. Today, they delivered two Christmas meals. If you feel so inclined, please donate to them here. There have also been some awe-inspiring nurses and pharmacists who have helped immensely. I will be forever grateful to them for their care and humanity. 

While I hate to be schmaltsy here, I encourage all of you to think a bit harder about the special people in your life this holiday season. Cancer has smacked some perspective into me, and I am only beginning to appreciate the fragility of life and the importance of clinging to the people you love. Hug everyone just a bit harder, and think of how blessed you are.

My best to you all.