The NYS Public Employees Conference held its yearly conference chaired by our lobbyist Peter Meringolo. This is where all the 80-plus unions set the legislative agenda for 2024. The hot topic this year, now that the ¾ accidental disability was signed into law is Tier Reform. Senator Jackson is at the forefront of this push and even made shirts that say “Tier 6 Sucks”. Tell us something we don’t know. 58% of the state is now Tier 5 & 6 and COBANC is at 52%. Peter Patterson, prior VP of the Nassau PBA, is chairing this committee and COBANC has a front-row seat as we were selected to the committee and will be reporting to the membership updates on this.
District 23 Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato seems to have taken over for former Assemblyman Peter Abbate fighting for union rights. She gave a great speech and we look forward to sitting down with her on our Tier fight. She spoke on the issues we are facing in recruitment and retention because of these terrible tiers.
The last speaker was our Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. Tom has also been a friend to labor. His office just helped out some members with questions on their paystubs because we couldn’t get a straight answer from payroll. His office is always willing to help us.
He addressed the concerns our retirees are having about getting their final average salary. It seems it is taking over 24 months or more frustrating our members. He is claiming short staffing, imagine that, and when a look back happens there are a lot of dots to connect, but vows to get this cleared up by hiring more staffing as the number of retiring has increased threefold. We can attest to that here in COBANC losing 3-5 members a month to retirement.
The next meeting will be the first week in February so look for our update then.
In Unity,
Peter A. Piciulo