1199 Retirees Celebrate 50 Years of Gains

Metropolitan New York 1199SEIU retirees celebrated 50 years of achievements at their annual holiday luncheon on December 21 at Manhattan’s Hilton Hotel.

Union President George Gresham saluted the retired members for “paving the way for the rest of us.” He said that the luncheon capped a year of activities to mark the Union’s winning its first contract with Montefiore Hospital 50 years ago.

“Without all the work that you’ve done over the years, the active 1199ers wouldn’t be here today and we wouldn’t have our great benefits,” Gresham said. “How special the pharmacists who founded our Union must have been to take on the responsibility of organizing poor hospital service workers, all during a period of segregation and division.”

Retirees cheered Gresham’s mentioning of the hard-fought contract negotiations in the spring that saved their pension and health benefits. “We had to redirect pay increases and COLA, but that meant that there would be not cuts in benefits or pensions,” Gresham stressed.

Mitra Behroozi, Executive Director of the 1199SEIU Benefit and Pension Funds, also hailed the past year’s accomplishments. “The devastating economic crash of 2008 took away many U.S. retirees’ savings and prevented them from retiring with dignity and hope,” Behroozi said.

“But the situation is different for us. We accomplished the amazing feat of saving our benefits,” she emphasized. “And although our pension assets lost one-third of their value last year, this year because of the Obama administration policies, our funds are earning returns of between 12 and 15 percent.”

“Given the circumstances, I couldn’t ask for anything better than what we’ve achieved in 2009,” said Herbert Hicks, a retired St. Mary’s Hospital maintenance worker. “My hope is that the economy turns around in 2010 so that we can build on what we have and improve our pensions.”

“We faced a lot of challenges this year, and we still have our benefits,” said Miriam Brown, vice-president of the New York Retirees Local and a former counselor at Maternity Infant Care in Manhattan. “Mitra (Behroozi) mentioned that we gained 4,000 new retirees this year,” Brown said. “That means the Retiree Local is getting bigger and badder.”

After the short program and lunch, the members showed off their youthfulness by filling the dance floor for the next few hours.