THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996            TAG: 9610310028
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Letter 
                                            LENGTH:   34 lines

PENSION AND JOB SATISFACTION, NOT RAISES, WERE COMPENSATION

On March 1, 1964, I accepted an appointment with the Portsmouth Fire Department. The base pay was $355 per month for a 72-hour workweek. The death and injury rate of firefighters was the highest of any occupation at that time - a very dangerous occupation to say the least. Raising a family was out of the question on the above salary, unless you could find part-time work. Most of us drove oil trucks for 50 cents an hour, learned to paint or worked some other job to make ends meet.

The job, as bad as it sounds, offered two things that made it worth taking: job security and a pension plan that allowed you to retire after 25 years if you could survive without becoming disabled or killed. After a couple of years, the camaraderie and the sense of self-satisfaction from saving a life or someone's home became the driving force to make you stay, because pay raises were low or nonexistent.

Around 1966 or 1967, in lieu of pay raises for the fire and police, the city decided to assume the responsibility of the pension plan by being the sole contributor. Prior to that, fire and police personnel were contributing 6 percent and the city 6 percent of our base salary to the pension plan. Every pay-raise committee was reminded of that, and our salaries always remained below the other cities. In essence, we were working for a pension plan and not for money.

If this plan, according to your newspaper reports, is burdening the city, it is no fault of these retirees. It is the fault of our city administrators for not making the contributions to the plan, as they agreed, and for letting high-paid city officials into the plan.

CHARLES E. WHITE

Portsmouth, Oct. 14, 1996 by CNB