St. Clare’s pensioners hope for boost from pandemic funds
Plan was terminated in 2018 due to $50M shortfall cutting benefits to 1,100 beneficiaries
Former employees of St. Clare’s Hospital, which the state forced to close in 2008, are hoping that some of the $1.9 trillion federal coronavirus relief bill can be used to fund their broke pension plan.
The St. Clare’s pension plan was terminated in 2018 amid a $50 million shortfall that led to a majority of the 1,100 beneficiaries — former nurses, lab techs, housekeepers and office staff — having their expected retirement benefits canceled.
A group of the pensioners has been appealing to state Sen. Jim Tedisco of Glenville to intervene on their behalf. The state had previously paid $28 million into the pension plan to fund benefits owed to retirees, some of whom now work for Ellis Hospital, which absorbed St. Clare’s as part of the statewide hospital consolidation program more than a decade ago.
More than half of St. Clare’s pen
sioners won’t get a dime.
Tedisco is now focusing his efforts on an $86 billion provision in the pandemic relief bill passed by the Biden administration set aside to bail out other failed pension plans. Tedisco, a Republican, says the St. Clare’s plan isn’t eligible under the COVID-19 relief bill because it was not a union pension plan.
“I find it a serious omission to not include a miniscule fraction of that stimulus relief to help our dedicated former St. Clare’s Hospital workers who have had the rug pulled out from under them,” Tedisco said. “I’m urging our federal representatives to do the right thing and fix this injustice by helping our shared constituents, the St. Clare’s pensioners, just as they’ve helped the Teamsters.”
St. Clare’s Pension Recovery Alliance Chair Mary Hartshorne told the Times Union on Thursday that her group’s members have had an extremely rough year.
The pandemic shut down the courts where they had been seeking compensation through a lawsuit filed against the pension’s board of directors, which is closely aligned with the Catholic Diocese.
And those former St. Clare’s workers who now work at Ellis and elsewhere had to risk their health trying to save the lives of COVID-19 patients who overwhelmed local hospitals knowing that they ultimately had been denied so much from their retirement years.
“It really has been a tough road for all of us,” Hartshorne said. “This is just an absolutely disastrous situation for us.”