Trimet general manager decides that the last arbitration award was sufficient for current retirees

Trimet Gen. manager Neil Mcfarlane has changed his stance on retiree benefits.

McFarlane says "after further analysis it became apparent to me that changing retiree benefits beyond the scope of arbitrator Gabba's  last ruling would put some retirees financial future in jeopardy"

Mcfarlane further said "we don't want to send a message to our current  employees that Trimet will abandon them  after they retired, that our word is meaningless"

 "We already have a morale problem at Trimet and we don't need to further exasperate this problem".

"Now our current retirees won't have to worry about medical bankruptcy during their retirement. After studying the evidence it became clear that we can fund those medical benefits as promised by cutting some executive staff and spending discretionary funds with more scrutiny."

"We don't need to penalize those people for the past mistakes."