I sincerely regret to inform those members that recently submitted DROP applications under the 20 years of service and 43 years of age to the Pension System, that we cannot process them due to the fact that the DPLSA contract language was changed. Four months ago the DPLSA leadership brought back a Tentative Agreement to the membership for ratification. In this agreement, one of the provisions stated that if you were 43 years old and had at least 20 years of service you could DROP/ Retire. This Tentative agreement was ratified by the DPLSA membership and it was my belief that our contract was finalized. About four weeks ago, we were notified by the DPLSA leadership that the contract was never signed. The city wanted us to agree to removing the above language regarding being able to Retire/ DROP if you were 43 years old and had at least 20 years of service. The DPLSA leadership called an emergency meeting of the Board of Directors and convinced them that they had to remove this provision or the city would not sign off on our contract and it had to be done today. The Board of Directors removed the language and re-ratified the contract. The contract was finally signed four weeks later, onThursday November 6, 2014, with the above provision removed. However, the finalized contract has not yet been disseminated to the members. I believe that once a contract is ratified by the membership it is finalized and we should never have agreed to remove any language from our already ratified contract. Several weeks back I spoke with the President of the Detroit Police and Fire Retiree Association, Don Taylor and told him that the City was attempting to not honor their end of the ratified contract. President Taylor told me that the City attempted to do the same thing to them. I asked what he did and he stated that he told them that if they attempted to reopen their already ratified contract that they would no longer support the Plan of Adjustment and get ready for a fight. The City realized that they did not want a fight and agreed to not attempt to alter the retiree’s contract. If you have any questions or concerns, please call me at 313 999-3844. The DPLSA needs strong leadership going forward.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:55:33 +0000
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