Another reason to torpedo teacher pensions

At one point when I was chancellor, based on discussions with many new and prospective teachers, I proposed that we offer each new hire a choice between the current salary and benefit package and an alternative based on a higher entry salary and lower pension benefits. No one would lose anything: new hires that wanted the lifetime pension benefit could still have it, while those who preferred the proposed alternative obviously would be better off.

Nevertheless, the teachers union rejected the offer, calling it "anti-union."

On the other hand, because employees typically get a significant lifetime pension only after working 25 or 30 years, there comes a point at which almost no one leaves the system. In New York, few teachers leave after 10 years. Quite a few of these senior teachers admit they're burned out, or would want to try something else, but they stay simply because they cannot afford to forego the pension. Given that these teachers are already tenured, moreover, it's virtually impossible to remove them. This is not a good way to get the teachers that children need in our classrooms.

Video on Illinois and other rotter states:
Related news:

What Budget Crisis? $630,000 for Cahokia Mounds:

The Mound is more than 1000 years old. It can hold on a few more years.

Rahm Emanuel Secretly Tells Union Bosses He Plans to Cut Chicago Workers’ Pensions:

Though it’s unknown whether any of the union bosses received a dead fish, union bosses seem more afraid of Rahm Emanuel than of their own members.

Byrne: Debtors' prison for deadbeat pols?

Did you know that Illinois, Indiana and four other states allow debt collectors to get arrest warrants for debtors if all other collection methods fail? The Minneapolis Star Tribune, which published a series last year on the practice and its abuses, discovered that a judge had sentenced some poor mope in downstate Kenney, Ill., to "indefinite incarceration" until he coughed up $300 that he owed a lumberyard. I couldn't independently verify that action, but "indefinite incarceration" in the cooler for Madigan seems appropriate.

Taxing business right out of Illinois

Oak Brook Village President Collects 4 Pensions

Previous post: Illinois Held Hostage