Welcome back! It’s good to start this school year with a new contract that increases our salaries, gives us a greater voice in our own professional development and makes changes to the teacher evaluation system that we advocated for.

But while we have some positive developments to look forward to in our schools, we also see continuing attacks on our profession, public education and public employees’ retirement security.

The Times attacks pensions

The New York Times on Aug. 3 continued its attack on public employee pensions. It published as a news article a piece focusing on New York City’s public pensions that really was written like an editorial, full of accusations and misleading statements about why the city has had to increase its contributions to the pension funds.

Nowhere did the article report the major reason for the need for increased city contributions: Wall Street and corporate manipulations of financial markets that in 2000, 2001 and 2002 caused — for only the second time in the history of the stock market — three consecutive years of losses in stock market investments. Remember the Enron, WorldCom and other scandals from these years?

The city’s public pension system — which consists of five separate funds including the Teachers’ Retirement System (TRS) and the Board of Education Retirement System (BERS) — were on track to make up for the investment losses from that period when we got hit by the Great Recession. Again, because of Wall Street greed, the stock market crashed beginning in the fall of 2007 and did not stop its downhill slide until the spring of 2009.

During the financial crash, assets of the TRS again fell dramatically. Since then, at the UFT’s insistence, the city has been required to make contributions to the TRS to make up for the losses.

In part because New York has been meeting its obligations to the pension system, our city is not in the situation of Detroit or Chicago. We also have been spared having a governor like Chris Christie in New Jersey who is cutting contributions to the public pension system, setting that state up for financial disaster.

But The Times article derided the city for making its required contributions and called for using money now designated for public employee pensions (money that is in fact deferred wages for teachers, firefighters, nurses and police) for other purposes.

The UFT will continue to make sure that our pensions are soundly funded and to insist that the city each year pay into the retirement system the Actuarial Required Contribution.

Social Security and Medicare

Also this summer, the Social Security Board of Trustees issued an annual report on the long-term financial condition of the Social Security system. Among the report’s findings are:

• The Social Security trust funds are growing and will continue to do so through 2019.
• If Congress fails to act, Social Security will face a shortfall by 2033, with income sufficient to pay only 77 percent of scheduled benefits at that time.
• The system would avoid this shortfall and be sufficiently funded if each employee and each employer would pay only an additional 1.44 percent of taxable payroll into the system.

Let’s hope a new Congress will make any tweaks necessary to ensure a continuation of 100 percent funding for Social Security.

Few people want tax increases, and Social Security supporters are looking for other changes in order to avoid raising taxes.

One great advantage of the Social Security system is that its administrative costs are so low — about 0.07 percent of expenditures. Private insurance companies’ costs are closer to 20 percent.

The annual report on Medicare was also issued over the summer. It shows improvement in the financial health of the Medicare program.

According to the report’s projections, the Medicare Trust Fund is fully solvent until 2030, four years longer than predicted in last year’s report. Analysts attribute the improvement to efficiency gains resulting from the Affordable Care Act as well as slow price growth during the Great Recession.

Medicare spending per beneficiary is expected to remain flat for the next few years, the report shows. However, spending is projected to rise in the next decade due mostly to rapidly rising prescription drug costs. Congress can further strengthen Medicare by passing the Medicare Drug Savings Act, which would stop big drug makers from price gauging and allow Medicare to negotiate the lowest discounted rate for prescription drugs.

Individual pension file

Every UFT member should set up and maintain a file of important pension-related papers, which should be accessible to a trusted person and should include copies of:

• Your up-to-date designation of beneficiary forms for the Qualified Pension Plan and for the Tax-Deferred Annuity program.
• Your most recent Annual Benefits Statement, which among other items has a record of your credited service and a listing of your beneficiaries.
• Your most recent Quarterly Account Statements for both the Qualified Pension Plan and TDA.
• Any other document related to your retirement benefits, such as a letter on a pension tier change or other correspondence from the TRS.