Making additional improvements to Tier 6 pensions

Robert Jackson was elected to the state Senate in 2018 after serving in the New York City Council for more than a decade representing Upper Manhattan. Jackson has been the driving force behind pension reform in the state Legislature and has helped the state’s Tier 6 enrollees increase their lifetime earnings and put their pensions more in line with older state employees. He is currently working on a number of measures designed to fill more than 10,000 vacant job positions in state government. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What key union-oriented legislation passed last year? What were the highlights?

The main thing was pension reform and this year it’s the same thing: Tier 6 pension reform to improve the pension calculations overall.

The benefits to public employees is about earning another $100,000 in their lifetimes. When you hear the saying by me and others that Tier 6 sucks, we’re trying to improve that.

The way Tier 6 was, no one was bringing up that Tier 6 sucks. People are being urged to advocate for what they want. When you look at enhancing Tier 6, it benefits public servants by potentially increasing their lifetime earnings by $100,000. That’s investing in their future when they know that they’re more apt to stay in the job longer and reap the benefits of the positions they work in.

I once worked as a state investigator, but if I were educated properly, I could have been in Tier 2. People are saying Tier 6 is not working for the employees when they retire.

The aim is to improve the outcomes so that when people retire they may not have to choose between having a second job in order to live. The major issue overall is to have contracts in place and I believe most of the contracts are in place for them, but pension reform is a major issue.

Some things have improved, such as crediting provisional time for promotional exams, and now the time has come for examining the eligibility for promotional exams to allow people more quickly to advance in their careers.

In the past two years, there’s been 14,000 positions available in state service. We want to get people moved through knowing that if they work hard and put in 25 to 30 years they can have a pension to live off of.

Also, we relaxed the age of pensions for civil service exams, so people close to meeting the age requirements can take a civil service exam, which would speed up their entry in the service so there’s no roadblocks to stop people from coming into the civil service system.

The state is monetizing the civil service exam, and we’re asking to have no examination fees for two years so people don’t have to worry about that. It used to take too long to have exams in the calendar. Now we’re moving more quickly to get people into jobs.

Were you happy with the Tier 6 changes that passed last year?

I’m happy because they’re improvements. They’re willing to make progress. What happened the year before was moving from 10 years of vesting into the pension to five years. That’s a big difference.

People used to work seven to eight years, so if they left because the salary wasn’t enough, they were not vested in the pension. So that was a big fat zero and they worked seven, eight years. Whereas now, if you worked five years and decided it’s not paying enough, you would be vested in the pension so that whenever you retire, that will be part of your retirement. That was a huge step in the process. We’d also like to see positive steps like relaxing the age and pushing the retirement age from 63 to 60.

What’s happening now is the system of civil service exams is improving so that people will be happy with the way things are progressing. So we’re keeping with the times so that civil service exams are updated every five years. Whereas before it was held whenever they held it.

What’s on the agenda for 2025 in terms of organized labor’s priorities? Are public sector unions largely satisfied with what they got in 2024, and don’t have any big pushes this year? What are the key bills coming through your committee so far? 

All of the unions have a contract in place and they’re looking to improve their contracts when it comes to salaries and benefits. All of these things are being looked at. We were speaking with Tim Hogues, chair of the Civil Service Commission at a hearing and that was an opportunity for him to come in to improve service and outcomes so more people apply for civil service jobs.

What’s your sense of how well Gov. Kathy Hochul is getting along with organized labor lately? There was some fallout over her initial pick for chief judge, Hector LaSalle, in 2023. Has that blown over? 

I think that the relationship is good. Kathy Hochul is our governor and, as you know, she’s running for reelection next year and she wants to have a good working relationship with labor, like any governor does. You have to look at what needs to be done to improve individuals that serve approximately 20 million people. She’ll have an opportunity to improve relationships with unions by going around and seeing what’s happening in the workplace.

Are you paying attention to New York City’s efforts to shift public sector retirees to a Medicare Advantage plan? Is this the right or wrong move?

I think the labor unions have litigated that to the point where anyone in the executive branch should know that it doesn’t work. These employees that are retired deserve the benefits that they have under Medicare and not the system they have in place. And anyone that’s trying to reduce the benefits of retirees knows all they have to do is look at hearings in the City Council. Labor unions will say you’re diminishing their rights under Medicare.

The most important thing right now is everyone is looking at what type of impact we'll have under our current president. We need to stay united on a positive point of view to make sure we monitor this, and make changes at the state level to protect the state workers and benefits they have. That’s the most important thing.