[grattperret]

Why exactly should the TWU members be willing to let new members get the shaft?

It's pretty obvious that police, teachers, and firefighters all deserve to be paid more than they're getting at the moment. Still, it doesn't do much good to speculate about who deserves what at this point.

Yes it does.

You just start throwing money around it does noone any good.

The MTA sucks with its management, but this TWU is being unreasonable. the only thing I have heard come out strongly is "They have money and we want some".

That is BS. It is like asking for a raise because you had a kid. YES you need the money more, but are you doing anything more for the company now that you have a kid? No? then you should be paid the same ammount (although a lot of companies DO pay you a bit more in that they enable you to put the kid on your insurance policy which they partially cover).

Anyway, most of the numbers are just BS to try to gain bargaining room. NOONE gets an 8% raise for doing nothing more than the previous years. Well, aside from congress. The 8% was there to barter and bolster the 2%/3% raise that was first on the table.

The 50 year old retirement age was another one there placed to counter the 62 year old proposal.

I think they should let these guys retire whenever they want, but make two stipulations. First being, the longer you work for them, the better the benefit. The second, you only GET a certain ammount of years of pension depending on the age you retire.

Let them retire at 50 after only 20 years of service, but pro-rate the ammount and start at a low ammount of years you can collect the pension. Base the pensions say on a 50%/30 year commitment and a 30 year/65 year old retirement age.

Or something similar.

Example:

You started at age 30. You want to get out ASAP, so you work 20 years. Fine.

But, at age 50, you only get 10 years of pension. And after only 20 years, you only get 35% of your final NON OVERTIME net pay.

You work 5 more years. The pension period extends to 15 years of benefits since you are retiring at 55. Since you have been there 25 years, your % goes to 40%.

OK, you decide to go for the whole enchelada. Say 60 years old, 30 years of service. That is the baseline, the same 50% salary, for 25 years.

Each year later than that, you get more benefits to a maximum. They could probably look at retirement age and age of death as a way to make it so that net costs do not come out as much more in the long run, but the people still get more money in their pockets each month for working longer/harder.

You retire at 70, you get it for life, and you get something like 65% of your salary, but unlike the current plan, it would probably costthe same $$ in the long run.

If both people, age 55 and age 70 lived to 100, 45 years at 50% compared to 30 years at 65%......

OK, so you work