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Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has OK’d Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bid to reduce the city’s multibillion dollar pension shortfall by cutting workers’ benefits and increasing contributions.

Quinn signed the proposed bill — derisively referred to as “Emanuel’s Law” by the Chicago Teachers Union and other critics — on June 9.

The new law, which will start to take effect in January 2015, will pare back benefits for the city’s municipal employees and laborers, affecting around 57,000 current and retired workers who will see their pension contributions grow from 8.5 percent of their annual salary to 11 percent by 2019.

Affected workers will also forfeit their compounded cost-of-living adjustments and will get no increase in retirement benefits at all in 2017, 2019 and 2025.

Emanuel has said that the measure was necessary to close a $9.4 billion funding gap in the municipal employee and laborer pension funds and to avoid severe cuts in programs and services and the potential insolvency of the city’s retirement funds.

But the city’s unions, united in the We Are One Chicago Coalition, have called the new law unconstitutional and said that they will sue to overturn it.

Associated Press, June 9

Chicago Sun-Times, June 9

Crain’s Chicago Business, June 9