Bruce McIver, president of the League of Voluntary Hospitals and Homes of New York, said NYSNA’s campaign to extend the deadline doesn’t address the fundamental problem of the ailing stock market’s toll on the plan’s funds. “All it does is delay the time in which you have to make a decision to address those problems,” McIver said.
The NYSNA pension plan is a defined-benefits plan, which only employers pay into. The plan, which has 70 percent of its assets invested in stocks, lost more than a third of its value last year because of the recession. Since the recession began, many pension plans that have investments in the stock market have found themselves underfunded.
While NYSNA officials hope to get the one-year extension, they know it may not be enough time for the pension to recover.
“We know that, ultimately, these discussions will need to continue,” said Barbara Conklin, senior associate director of the union’s Economic and General Welfare Program. “But it’ll give us a year. It would allow time for additional planning.”
Meanwhile, Herman, who is single and has no children, still has a mortgage to pay on her house in New Jersey. She was planning to continue working, but if it makes more financial sense to quit, she just wants to know she’ll be comfortable enough after years on the job.
“I’m not looking to fly around the world,” Herman said. “I’m looking to be able to eat well, live well and not worry about things.”
- Jeanmarie Evelly and Marcella Veneziale
Opportunities to enhance the health care workforce are discussed in these reports by the Center for an Urban Future, City Limits' sister think tank: Working Toward A Workforce System, March 2009, and Chance of A Lifetime, May 2006.
