Why has the local press ignored Trimet austerity?

For years and years now we have been hearing about the most generous benefits in the entire country. Yes we did have about the best health care coverage money could buy, our going bankrupt due to medical expenses was something ex Trimet union employees never had to worry about. Neither did we have to worry about our monthly expenses being impacted by a sudden illness as all of our deductibles were reasonable.
All of this was paid for by Trimet.


Well the last several years has brought on the onslaught of Austerity. All of a sudden everybody's debts were too high! Places like  City of Portland, State of Oregon, United States of America, Greece, Spain, Italy, to name a few all declared austerity.

And Trimet did it too!

Remember, 'austerity' only affects the little people. The people controlling the strings have never lost a thing. As a matter of fact, in the case of Trimet executives, they have actually increased their personal wealth, while the personal wealth of their riders and their union employees both went down.

The biggest losers were the riders of course, some had to move, others had to give up jobs, and all of them had to cough up more money, deal with more crowded less frequent service and gestapo like tatics of the Trimet fare police.

But there are others, who the news has totally ignored.
The TRIMET retirees.
Like all retirees before me, I actually was stupid enough to think that when I retired from Trimet the benefits they promised would be there.
Turns out to be false. Only places like Clackamas County are expected to honor their commitments. Trimet didn't even think twice about violating its contract with its employees.

So exactly what did retirees lose.
Let's take my case, because my case is the most familiar to me and it would be parallel to others.
First of all, let detail what did I do for Trimet.
15 years of service, not one complaint of any consequence, not even one  accident. (don't forget, I was the poster boy for distracted driving at Trimet)
In other words I cost the company ZERO in liability claims.

After  15 years I could actually retire and get $950/mo and some decent health benefits. Or so I thought.
$950/mo isn't enough to live on. That's the equivalanet of 5% of Mcfarlanes monthly salary. I can't live on that but I don't have to drive the bus nor put up with any idiots around me. I took the deal.

The union and the company couldn't come to terms so Mr Mcfarlane threw years of past practice out the window and started forcing union members to pay for all increases in health premiums since there was no union contract . I didn't care so much about that then because I was still working.
Then the arbitrator decided in favor of the company and reduced our level of health coverage. Gone were the days of $5 co-pay for just about everything. People that continued with blue cross all of a sudden had two sets of copays, one for medications up to $1500 and hospitalization $1500. It was still decent coverage but not 'Cadillac'. But we didn't have to pay that increase anymore so once again our checks were whole

I retired with the $950 and the health.  The media never actually covered the first round of union losses. As a matter of fact the company is using the exact same propaganda for its second round of cuts. The never changed a word of it.

Then once again the union and the company couldn't come to terms, so  Mcfarlane forces the increases down the throats of his employees as before.
In my case it was $188/mo out of my $950.
That is a 20% reduction in my pension and is as large as the cuts in Greece.
My pension is now $762.
Where is the media coverage of this?
NOWHERE!