Chicago Union Leaders at their finest: no public coffers beyond plundering!

[xiggi]

<p>What a wonderful world for union leaders! Get rehired for a day and collect a 158,000 a year present!</p>

<p><a href=“One-day rehiring nets former Chicago labor leader a $158,000 city pension”>One-day rehiring nets former Chicago labor leader a $158,000 city pension;

<p>And there is more of the same:</p>

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Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders</p>

<p>In all, 23 expected to collect combined $56 million in their lifetimes</p>

<p>All it took to give nearly two dozen labor leaders from Chicago a windfall worth millions was a few tweaks to a handful of sentences in the state’s lengthy pension code.</p>

<p>Twenty years later, 23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds thanks to the changes, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation found.</p>

<p>What’s more, none of the labor officials retired in the traditional sense. Even as they collected their inflated city pensions, they held on to their high-paying union jobs. A decade ago, those public pension funds were flush, but they’re now in such deep financial trouble that they threaten to burden taxpayers and dues-paying union workers alike.</p>

<p>•Liberato “Al” Naimoli, president of the Cement Workers Union Local 76. He retired last year from a $15,000-a-year city job that he last held a quarter-century ago. Today, Naimoli receives more than $13,000 a month from the city laborers’ pension fund even as he continues to earn nearly $300,000 annually as president of Local 76. His city laborers’ pension will pay him about $4 million during his lifetime, according to a Tribune/WGN-TV analysis based on the funds’ actuarial assumptions.</p>

<p>•James McNally, vice president of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150. He receives nearly $115,000 a year even though at the time he retired, in 2008, he had not worked for the city in more than 13 years. He was only 51 when he started collecting a city pension. By the time he turns 78, he will have received roughly $4 million from the city laborers’ fund.</p>

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<p>[Union</a> pensions: Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders - Chicago Tribune](<a href=“Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders”>Law gives huge pension perks to union leaders)</p>

[MommaJ]

<p>I think the true responsibility here lies with the state legislators who no doubt allowed themselves to be bought with union campaign contributions. No surprise that union honchos, like most honchos of any stripe, will act in their own best interests, but the elected officials who made this happen had a higher calling and betrayed the trust of their constituents and their state. (Whenever I hear the call for putting various powers and responsibilities to the states rather than the feds, I think of the collection of incompetents, low-lifes and thieves that serve in great numbers in state legislatures and I shudder.)</p>

[tom1944]

<p>MommaJ- I agree with you 100%. To think that these same legislative officials never passed other legislation that lined the pocket of some other select group is foolish.
The union leaders are greedy pigs to ask for this legislation but it is the legislature that failed here.
If peolpe do not believe it happens all the time with the powerful people they support also they are kidding themselves.</p>