“Why are retirees with the least ability to absorb this financial blow the first ones made to suffer?... Can’t the mayor find the savings elsewhere?” Fraternal Order of Police President Mike Shields wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Our city continually victimizes its most vulnerable citizens with red light cameras in lower income neighborhoods, dangerous school closures, high murder rates caused by a downsized police force, and now Chicago is set to abandon retired police officers who risked their lives serving and protecting this City and were promised healthcare during retirement,” Shields wrote.
Tom Ryan, president of the Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2, branded it “outrageous” that city retirees were forced to read about “this drastic change in their retirement security” in the Chicago Sun-Times, instead of hearing it first from City Hall.
“ I also find it ironic that this reduction to promised healthcare coverage for retirees, which the City says will save it 109 million dollars per year, is proclaimed at the very same time that the Mayor is poised to announce a plan to use millions of dollars in public funds to help build a basketball facility for a private institution. I must ask, where are our priorities?” Ryan wrote in an email to the Sun-Times.
Henry Bayer, executive director of AFSCME Council 31, said Emanuel has offered “no details except to say non-Medicare retirees will have to seek private insurance through an exchange” mandated by Obamacare that has not yet been launched.
No comments:
Post a Comment