IEA President Swanson and the Board of Directors stab retirees in the back.

At last year’s IEA Representative Assembly, IEA leadership called on the delegates to renounce their long-standing opposition to any change in the legislative platform that would weaken pension benefits.

Ken Swanson argued that the lobbyists must be allowed to sit at the table. While delegates from the IEA student chapter first opposed the change, they were brow beaten into submission. Others of us stood at the microphone, warning of the consequences.

We lost the vote and Swanson got his okay to sell-out future teacher pensions. Madigan smiled. He knew the IEA would do nothing to stop him.

A week later, Madigan got his two-tier pension system and any teacher hired after January 1st of this year is screwed.

Last night I received this from retired teacher, Ed Rosenthal:

Good Evening.

Tonight the IEA Board by a vote of 49-31 approved a change in the Legislative Platform from language that opposed taxation of retirement benefits to include an exception that allows IEA to support taxation of pension benefits if it applies to all retirement income above a particular level. The original proposal from the Legislative Committee did not include this change but President Swanson pointed out that with the current language it inhibited IEA’s ability “to sit at the table” when these laws were being discussed. This is the same argument used last year when President Swanson wanted us to change the language regarding pension benefits to allow IEA “a seat at the table” to negotiate on changes to the pension plan. As you know, we never got to the table and the Two Tier Pension plan was approved with NO IEA input.

Jack Tucker presented the position of the Retired Council against any change to the current language to the entire Board of Directors. Jack also requested a roll call vote which was granted. For those of you who are delegates to the IEA-RA, here are the votes of the candidates for IEA Executive Officers. A NO vote supports our position; a YES vote is against our position.

PRESIDENT
Blade ————YES
Klickna———-NO

VICE-PRESIDENT
Griffin————-NO
Grimes———–YES
Hatfield———–YES
Orr—————–YES

SECRETARY-TREASURER
Kaplan————NO
Llorens———–YES

You may want to keep that in mind when you go to vote.

Personally, the Board meeting characterized the problem with IEA-Retired’s position in the IEA. Of the 81 votes on the issue (1 abstention), only 1 came from a retired member (Jack). That means that Jack had 1.2% of the possible votes. Retired make up 6% of the IEA (8,310 of 137,777). 6% of the Board would give us at least 5 board members. That would allow us a better opportunity to have the voice of the retired teachers heard. Jack can only go to the mike so many times! Food for thought!!

Ed

I am a delegate to the RA. I will not vote for this change in the legislative platform that would weaken retiree benefits. I will not stab our retired teachers in the back. I will not vote for any candidate who would. I urge other delegates to do the same.

Orange sweaters to the mic!