Will new IEA President Cinda Klickna sell us out on pensions too? Is sitting at the table all these people want?
I thought I would give the whole pension issue a rest today.
But then Ken Swanson met with the Chicago Sun-Times.
Illinois Education Association President Ken Swanson told us this week that he’s willing to look at “increasing the [employee] contribution in some reasonable way,” but he also said any discussion must start with financial data on the pension systems that is produced by an independent source — and not the Civic Committee.
I was flooded with emails this morning by teachers who read this. Outraged.
But I’m not surprised.
I hate to say, “I told you so.” But I did.
I warned that the pension robbing bill of Cross, Madigan and Ty Fahner of the Civic Committee (and who is kidding who? This is Ty Fahner’s bill) was on life support unless our leadership gave it new life in secret meetings with Ty Fahner this summer.
This follows the exact scenario of SB 7. First the IEA leadership opposed Performance Counts when it came to the Fall veto session. Performance counts was aimed at the right to strike, tenure rights and seniority rights.
Swanson said, “We want to be at the table.”
No problem. He was invited to sit at the table.
They met with the corporate backers of the bill, Stand for Children and Advance Illinois.
Then the IEA became the bill’s chief sponsor and got it passed.
The fact that 100,000 phone calls and 100,000 emails by IEA members and members of other public service employee unions were made to oppose Senate Bill 512 and any increase in costs to members or a decrease in benefits means nothing to Swanson.
Swanson’s retirement date of July 15th can’t come soon enough.
But what about incoming IEA President Cinda Klickna?
Will she surrender pension justice as well?
Why don’t we ask her?
Fred Klonsky 
These IEA people who are rotated into the chairs of office have been around forever. Which means they have an analogous problem to our elected representatives. They live in a hermetic world where the priorities of the organization are more important than those they represent. The IEA (or NEA, for that matter) is at its best when promoting idealistic agendas that have little hope of being adopted, and these are not so much forgiven by the membership as forgotten, so brief has our collective memory become. They count on this, and survive by it.
When I was a comparatively new NEA member in the early ’70s, I was appalled at the irrelevant platforms adopted by the NEA national convention (cf. items concerning US policy in Central America, and on and on and on….). Then I realized it was the only game in town, narrowed my focus, and spent the rest of my career as a member and negotiator, working for wages, hours, and working conditions. Over that time, it became clear to me in a number of specific and very real negotiations scenarios and grievance actions that the IEA had its own agenda, and one which they would not hesitate to separate from ours when they felt the occasion appropriate.
I think those retirees who want to think seriously about this have already concluded that our earned pension rights are going to be put on the block by certain interests, from Madigan and the Commercial Club on down; now it’s time for the scales to fall from our eyes as they fell from Paul’s, and to see the IEA as their enablers. The question: what is to be done about this?
Regardless of the details or outcome and given the works of Ken in the editorial, Ken should be held personally responsible for ANY changes to our pensions. Who authorized this sudden change in the position on pensions? The rank and file? The RA? Where does Ken get off taking away what I have worked for and have been promised?
I have put a phone call into IEA this morning DEMANDING the answers to these questions. So far I have been censored from posting on IEA Facebook and IEA website and now they choose to ignore my phone calls. WHO is accountable in this leadership?
Cinda, you better speak soon!!!!
I hope the sellout of teachers, tenure, senior and PENSIONS ends with Cinda holding the line. We must support her and OURSELVES in PREVENTION and PROTECTION without further loss.
Well Ms Klickna, don’t you dare sell out our pensions as your predicessor wants to do. I paid into the retirement system for 38 years plus paid out of pocket for 6 more years to raise my retirment income. I don’t want to seen another cent taken from any Illinois teacher’s retirement fund and used wastefully to bail out another state account. We all worked hard educating our state’s children and deserve our pensions.