As you may recall, when OCMA obtained the 2.7% @ 55 retirement formula for the membership, managers agreed to pay the entire cost of this enhanced benefit, which included a slight annual adjustment.
In the current MOU, managers agreed to phase-in the “employee pick-ups for retirement” and on your July 19th paycheck the second phase of that retirement cost will be charged. That said, because the managers are bearing the burden of these additional retirement costs, the annual adjustment will be greater this year, and likely for next year too.
Over and above the phase two retirement pick-up cost that you will begin paying on Friday, an additional annual retirement adjustment of between 1.75% and 1.91% will be charged to you also. This additional charge is due to the cost assumption changes used by OCERS and thus the increased “reverse pick-up” cost that is charged to the employee. These annual adjustments have occurred every July after the 2.7% @ 55 benefit was implemented, though the cost increases have varied from year to year.
OCAA (attorney) members will be incurring the same adjustment as OCMA and other bargaining units such as OCEA are also incurring a significant retirement adjustment this year, though less than OCMA as they have already been paying both employee pickups.
OCMA has been working over the past couple of weeks to determine what this cost adjustment would be and to verify the charges. We understand that this could not have come at a more difficult time for each of you, however we wanted to advise you of this impact as soon as we were able to verify the amounts.
Although this is not good news, your retirement benefit will far exceed the additional costs that you are paying now. Please feel free to contact the OCMA office if you have questions.