Quote:No I don't.  Employers should not be responsible for people's retirement, that should be up to the people.  City employees should fund their own retirement plan (pension) through 401k's or other avenues.

While I agree with you in principle that people should manage their own retirement and treat employer-provided benefits as a plus, not a plan, I disagree with one basic concept here. When these employees were interviewed, they were presumably told about their pension benefits, and those benefits were presumably put in writing. A commitment was made to them that their pensions would be there for them when they retired, and that commitment must be lived up to. I'm not against discontinuing pensions for new employees, but you can't tell someone who gave you forty years of their life that, oops, surprise, that pension you've earned over the last forty years doesn't exist anymore. Too bad. Enjoy Wal-Mart until you're 92 and dead.

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