From the Illinois Education Association...

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For years now, the Chicago Tribune has been railing against public pensions and carrying the flag for the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago.

The math of the Civic Committee’s plan is flawed and the Civic Committee knows it. SB512 would have cost taxpayers $34 billion more over 15 years and it would effectively kill the state pension systems.

Earlier this week the Trib called on lawmakers to pass pension reform to stop Illinois’ money from going “down the pension drain.”

Funny thing, the police, firefighters, teachers and other public employees in Illinois don’t consider the pension system “a drain.” They consider it their future. And the problems pension systems are facing are not of the public employees’ making. Employees have always paid their share.

Did you know that teachers don’t get social security? Loyally, they have paid their 9.4 percent of every paycheck into a system that is guaranteed by the state’s constitution to give them a secure retirement.

Did you know that the average private employer pays 6.2 percent social security plus another 4.4 percent into a 401k plan, costing that employer 10.6 percent of an employee’s salary each year?

If you don’t include all the money that is now owed to the teachers’ pension system because the state for years siphoned from it, the cost of a teacher’s pension to the public would be 7.01 percent of each teacher’s salary. The cost is less than in private industry.

Did you know that the average teacher’s yearly pension after 29 years of educating the youth of this state is $42,700 a year. Hardly “posh” as it’s been described in your pages.

The Tribune and the Civic Committee, a group of the state’s richest residents, want to place the blame of the unfunded pension liability on the employees. That blame is misplaced.

Have you thought about the future? Public school teachers in Illinois are ineligible to receive social security. If the pension system is killed off, what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of people who do now or will rely on that system for retirement stability? They have no social security to fall back upon.

Then what? Then what will the Trib and the Civic Committee do?

You act as if public employees are the enemy of this state. We are not. We are representatives of the majority of working people in Illinois. We are the middle class. We are busting our humps every day to ensure the children of this state have a bright future, that our residents are safe.