NCPERS News Clips

July 5, 2011

News Clips for July 5th, 2011

• NJ gov signs bill reining in employee benefits
  New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday signed landmark legislation that increases pension and health contributions paid by a half-million teachers, police and other public workers and removes the issue from collective bargaining for four years.
• Tax hikes needed for pension funding: study
  U.S. state and local governments will need to raise taxes by $1,398 per household every year for the next 30 years if they are to fully fund their pension systems, a study released on Wednesday said.
• Firefighters local agrees to pension contributions
  Fire captains, engineers, firefighters and paramedics with the Folsom Fire Department began contributing 5 percent of their salary this month toward their retirement under the terms of a new labor contract.
• Massachusetts Curbs Bargaining
  Heavily Democratic Massachusetts on Friday became the latest state to curtail public workers' collective-bargaining rights, as lawmakers approved a $30.6 billion budget that gives cities and towns greater leeway to force employees to pay more for their health care.
• Study finds common traits of solid public pension plans
  The most important trait that allowed some public pension plans to weather the financial crisis better than others was full employer contributions made consistently over time, according to a study to be released Wednesday by the National Institute on Retirement Security.
•  Unions will continue public fight against collective bargaining changes
  Many of Wisconsin's public employee groups promise to take their cases to the public instead of the negotiating table, now that they can no longer bargain for anything but wages. The state's limits on collective bargaining took effect yesterday for all state employees, plus local-and-school workers without contract extensions.