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May 22, 2002
Union helps secretary get reinstated to pension tier
Freda Fancher with a Greenville student.
See also: School-Related Professionals
After more than three decades as a school secretary, Freda Fancher knows a thing or two about keeping order and following through on details.
So she has a bit of advice about employment history: "Don't trust anyone else on details. Get everything in writing, make sure it's dated and keep everything." Fancher is a member of the Greenville Paraprofessional Federation.
Fancher's pension is proof of her persistence. After years of work and the help of her statewide union to get her reinstated to her rightful tier, she will retire in June with almost 19 percent more in her pension from the New York State Employees' Retirement System.
Complicated criteria
When a co-worker in the Greene County district retired, Fancher, who was hired full-time as a secretary in Greenville schools in 1975 after working part-time as early as 1965, checked on her retirement status.
In 1998, she found out she wasn't being credited for one year's work as a secretary in the Hunter-Tannersville district. That one-year difference meant she had been placed in Tier 2 of ERS, instead of her rightful place in Tier 1.
Laws regarding the state's retirement systems are complicated, with many criteria for eligibility. For many, the big issue is notification of the benefits of joining the public retirement system, or whether one was denied the opportunity to join when first hired.
To right those wrongs, New York State United Teachers in 1993 was successful in securing passage of state legislation, known as 803 of Section 18, to provide a window of opportunity for members to apply for retroactive membership.
Although that window closed in 1996, that didn't stop Fancher. Her motto, displayed on her desk, is: "Always behave like a duck; keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath." After several years of trying to sort it out, she went to her union for help in March 2001.
"I knew I was right," she said. She was bolstered by the support of her husband, her local union (led by Maria Marquit), and NYSUT.
ERS granted Fancher retroactive credit after she was able to prove that the district made a mistake because ERS enrollment was mandatory for that job, said Jim Bilik, the NYSUT attorney who worked with labor relations specialist Fran Wolf on the case.
"Freda could prove to the retirement system that she had been hired in a permanent position and that she had worked it," Bilik said. "Also, she received cooperation from the school district that made the mistake in the first place. Then, we were able to convince the county Civil Service Commission to make a retroactive appointment for her."
Wolf, who works out of NYSUT's mid-Hudson regional office, said Fancher's case is an example where a wrong, perpetrated more than 30 years earlier, can be righted.
"Freda was tireless in tracking down all the people she needed to talk to," Wolf said.
Fancher's main obstacle was turnover among administrators and school board members in Hunter-Tannersville, she said.
"I talked to everybody except the pope," she said laughing.
When she was restored to Tier 1, and found out her pension check would increase by 183/4 percent, it was all worth it. She said, "I was thrilled and really glad that I stuck to it."
Fancher's advice is: "Listen to your union and go to your union for help. You don't have to go it alone."
- Betsy Sandberg
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