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Conn. Town Gets Union Agreement on DC for DB Switch
A news report in the Register Citizen of Torrington, Connecticut, said the latest benefits pact was with the city managers union with whom the city has been in talks since July 2008. The agreement makes the union the fourth out of seven representing city employees to agree to eliminate pensions.
The city managers union joins the organizations
representing the city’s firefighters, management
resolution staff, non-manager city employees, and
emergency dispatchers in eliminating pensions. The new
plan applies only to new hires in those departments.
“We made ourselves very clear on management side that we
wanted to implement this,” said Mayor Ryan Bingham, in
the news report. “It really is revolutionary in a sense.
Typically government pensions are the most rich in terms
of cost. We wanted to move more to a private sector
model.”
Bingham said that the lagging economy has resulted in
arbitration cases ruling in the favor of cities and
municipalities, so unions are more willing to make
concessions.
“I think they knew that this was a goal of ours, and they
saw other unions agreeing to it. The writing was on the
wall that this was good for the residents,” he told the
newspaper.