The thing that sort of touched off my desire to write this series on Detroit was coming across this article in the Free Press that was sitting on my parent’s coffee table. Oddly enough (or maybe not) it wasn’t the plight of the widows featured in the article that really propelled me though. It was the fact that the article was written at all. To me, the story seemed like a calculated attempt to put a compelling face on the story of the dwindling pension fund. As social workers we know, widows have historically been a group deemed “deserving” of our support.  The more I researched the story online, the more often I started noticing this pop up in the ads displayed on my pages (I know you are watching Google), a video created by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSME). The video led me to this site, Stand with Detroit also featuring stories of the folks whose pensions were under threat. The more I researched, the more evidence I found to support my theory that  the people of Detroit were organizing to stand up for themselves and their futures and the more I believed that social services organizations were playing a role in that. Immediately following the rulings from Judge Rhodes back in December ( remember way back when I started this real lengthy series?), AFSME announced its’ intentions to file an appeal of the ruling. Several unions in the Detroit area joined suit. The US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan has devoted its own page to the City of Detroit’s case. A look at adversary proceedings indicate that two lawsuits (probably appeals but I’m not privy to looking at the papers) have been filed by retiree organizations, the Official Committee of Retirees of the City of Detroit and the Retired Detroit Police and Fire Fighters Association. Other suits have been filed regarding the loss of health care.  Its this sort of vocalizing of distress, I think, that led to this: $330M Pledged to Save Pensions and DIA Artwork from Detroit Bankruptcy. $330M donated by 9 foundations including the New York based Ford Foundation as well as local organizations like the McGregor Fund.  Call me naive, or maybe, more kindly, idealistic, but I really think that putting a face to a struggle makes all the difference. Its one thing to hear about creditors or about pension funds that are hemorrhaging money and its quite another to see the faces and hear the stories of those actually affected by Judge Rhodes’ ruling. We, social workers, can sometimes take this for granted. Its a gift our position offers, keen insight into another’s personal struggles, struggles we may not have ever or will ever experience on our own. What sets us apart from other mental health practitioners is what we do with this gift. We are called by the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics to advocate for our clients on small and large scales. We see the face of the struggle and then we help people in power to see it too. I can’t say for sure, but it would my guess that there are a lot of busy social workers in Detroit right now. Honestly, it pains me a good deal that I’m not one them. Social workers with clients who are willing and interested in supporting the cause should be put in touch with organizations filing appeals or media outlets who might be interested in their story. Social workers should be involved in the advocacy to make sure that their client’s voices are heard as negotiations and cuts continue. It might be a losing battle, but its certainly one worth joining. A ruling like Judge Rhodes’, indicating that pensions would not be protected in a Chapter 9 bankruptcy and should be treated as contractual rights, is unprecedented. That means that if other cities some day face similar problems with their pension funds (and with this economy, it’s entirely possibly), this ruling will likely be cited as case law on the matter and could play a role in any decisions made. Its not just a Detroit issue, its potentially a national one. Its not just a legal matter either, its one that reaches us, social workers and our clients. I think its one that we should be paying a great deal of attention to (obviously), because ultimately, it may be our clients impacted most when this is resolved. We are the ones who will be helping individuals to come up with contingency plans if their pensions are lost, not Mr. Orr, not Judge Rhodes or any of the negotiators,  and I certainly would not want to be sitting across from them if I didn’t do all I could to prevent the need for a contingency in the first place. Climbing down off my soapbox now……The End.

 

Back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

Just one last thing…. This makes me REAL happy.

 

When I was growing up on the eastside of Detroit, my neighborhood was comprised primarily of municipal workers.  In fact, my parents were among the few adults not employed by the city of Detroit. My youth was spent mooching the benefits allotted to the children of Detroit’s firefighters and police officers, the status bestowed upon many of my friends. I attended the fire department’s Zoo Day at the Detroit Zoo and gained access to special rooftop views of the Detroit Fireworks.  I enjoyed a free coney dog on an occasion or two, ran through some illegally uncapped hydrants. I met important Detroit political figures and some sports ones too (though to be honest I often didn’t know who they were). I enjoyed all the peripheral perks befriending a city employee’s child could offer while my friends’ parents dutifully worked toward the perks they were expecting in the future, pensions and health care after retirement. Those perks were the reason people took the job in Detroit in the first place. The reason why after 1999 when Michigan lawmakers lifted the residency requirement for municipal employees, people who left the city continued to commute back down I-94 to their jobs in Detroit. Those perks are even the reason why a number of my childhood friends followed in their parents’ footsteps and became employees of the city we grew up in. Those perks meant a secure future for yourself and your family, that was until the future of Detroit became uncertain itself.  The threat to Detroit employee’s pensions has been steadily growing as Detroit began its very public decline. With Judge Rhodes ruling allowing Detroit to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, losses became almost certain. Emergency financial manager Kevyn Orr suggested “significant cuts” would be necessary, figures as high as 84 percent have been thrown around. Thats a lot considering the average pension is only $19,000. For many retirees, the monthly payment from the pension fund they contributed to for at least 20 years is their only income. They are not old enough to collect Social Security. Police offers and fire fighters receive only $30,000 and are not able to collect Social Security at all unless they have had an additional job through which they became eligible for those benefits.  In addition to  monthly payments being cut, Mr. Orr has announced that that health care benefits will be reduced as well. His proposal? Any retirees eligible for Medicare be enrolled in such and everyone else will receive $125 dollars stipend toward their healthcare. The proposed changes make retired  and current Detroit employees’ futures seem anything but secure. It also makes them seem like collateral damage in the salvaging of Detroit. I doubt any of them would have chosen to work for the city if they knew that the occasional free coney dog and a good spot to view fireworks would be the only real payoff in the end.   What remedy is really available now though, when even the voice of the elected officials has proven inadequate? Former and current Detroit employees (and possibly their social workers) have been turning to the courts to fight the battle for their pensions and health care benefits! We’ve finally made it to my point  …. but let’s talk about that next week,,,,

In the meantime, i kind of like this summary.

On Christmas Eve, I had the pleasure of  attending a mass held in  the oldest church building in Detroit. This was the 166th Christmas being celebrated in this particular church in downtown Detroit. For 166 years, Detroiters have come on December 25 (or 24th, like in my case) to this one building to join together in worship as a community. In 1847, when the inaugural mass was held Detroit was still the capital of Michigan. The following year that would no longer be the case. By 1900, Detroit would have a police department, a library and the Tigers as their baseball team. . In 1903, the Packard Motor Car Co. plant would be built.  When Christmas was celebrated in 1958, the plant would be shut down. No one knew then that the abandoned Packard plant would, over 50 years later, serve as the national media’s “money shot” in stories about the city’s decline. There was a lot the citizens of Detroit didn’t know then. They didn’t know Motown Records would find its home among them. They weren’t aware of the riots that would come, the inadequate and corrupt leaders that would run their city, or the fact that many of the citizens themselves would end up fleeing city boundaries and moving to the suburbs.  A lot can change in 50 years. A lot can change in less time. On January 17, 1985, I was born in the city of Detroit. At that time, The Tigers still played at Tiger’s Stadium, the Lions at the Silverdome. Coleman Young, the first African American man to be elected mayor of Detroit, would win his third term. Over the next few years, the people mover (our version of the subway) and I-696 would be completed. The American Motor Company would fold and our police chief would be sent to prison for embezzling millions of dollars from the city. 28 years later, on January 17, 2013, my nephew was born in the same city as me. He’ll never watch a baseball game at Tiger Stadium or a football game at the Silverdome though. The mayor elected during his first year of life is the first white man to hold the position in 30 years, though the position means very little at this point. He’ll grow up hearing a lot of complaining about the construction on I-696, the loss of the auto industry in Detroit, and the mayor who would find himself joining our former police chief on the list of Detroit officials with prison sentences under their belts. Things that just 28 years ago were inconceivable to the public, things that even 5 years ago, when that 161st Christmas mass was celebrated, were inconceivable to a city of people whose adopted motto was “Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus (We hope for better days; it shall rise from the ashes).

To start at the beginning of what happened to Detroit would be impossible (and probably pretty irrelevant to my purpose here). It was one thing as much as another and I’m sure you’ve seen enough articles pointing at this or that, at him or them, to gather its been a slow and desperate fall.  For our purposes though, it makes sense to call the beginning when the governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, signed Public Act 436. The bill essentially tells struggling local governments in Michigan to work with the state to end the struggle or  an emergency fiscal manager will be put in place. Gov Snyder signed this law despite the fact that the Michigan Supreme Court had given Michigan voters a chance to repeal an earlier version of the same public act a few months prior and repeal it they did.  Regardless of the public’s actions, Public Act 436 took effect and Detroit’s government officials  found themselves at the bargaining table unable or unwilling (depending on who you talk to)  to bargain. Since no agreement was reached, Detroit’s emergency fiscal manager, Mr Kevyn Orr,  was appointed in March 2013. The city council appealed to the state, Detroiters traveled to Lansing to protest but they had no luck. The rights Detroiters had during the 165th Christmas mass in 2012, the rights they had when my nephew was born just two months earlier were gone. By the time I sat there at the 166th Christmas mass last week, our emergency fiscal manager against the wishes of many of the city’s residents would have filed for bankruptcy. The federal  Circuit Court would have said it was allowed and Detroit would feel very much like a place on the verge… but on the verge of what?