Teamster retirees fight massive pension cuts

Looks like some news coming from people who are receiving pension checks from the famous Teamsters Central States Fund.

Apparently the "Fund" has been having financial problems recently and they are in progress of trying to reduce monthly benefits by around 50% !!!

And it seems some law from 2014 is saying the U.S. Treasury is involved, and they have appointed some kind of "special master" to help determine if these cuts are even legal.

The Teamsters are the ones proposing the cuts in order to avoid going bust.

Things aren't going so good I guess.

This could be a clear signal of a new financial crisis in the making.


Teamster retirees fight massive pension cuts at Kansas City town hall, warn others at risk

Dale Dorsey, after working 33 years, is facing a 51 percent cut to his pension. He’s not facing it alone.

He’s married. Dorsey’s mother lives with them. And, having gotten a late start on a family, so do his children, one in the fourth grade and one in the eighth grade.

“This is just going to cripple my family,” said Dorsey, who was one of 750 retirees and workers who attended a town hall meeting Tuesday in Kansas City.

They came to battle massive pension cuts proposed by the Central States Pension Fund, which covers 400,000 participants, 220,000 of them retired. The fund is so short of money, it will go broke in 10 years.

Teachers are next. Just a matter of time.

kids don't even stand up for their old parents in large enough numbers.

Selfishness has been programmed skilfully enough

originally posted by: Bluntone22
Teachers are next. Just a matter of time.

Yup.

Many States and Localities are broke too.

The Teamsters are a private pension, teachers are public.

Big bust outs coming any time now.

The beauty of unions, they'll "negotiate" a 2% raise for the workers and then line their pockets with the workers money and then "mis-manage" the funds, perfect.

I was telling a union carpenter that he better save outside of his pension and tie his money up into asset that produces something because the market is going south.

The reason the pensions get cut is because the companies where the employees work to pay into the pension fund don't hire employees anymore. They temp out half of the workforce so rather than paying into the pension fund they have a bunch of none union employees thwarting the system through temps.

I know I worked at a teamster print shop but I quit once they cut everyone's pay, then they cut back the amount of people required to do the job and replaced half of the company with forever temps.

a reply to: xuenchen

This is why you can never trust an employer to take care of you. Regardless of what they say while you're working for them, once you're no longer working you will be seen as too expensive. Whether that's a pension, disability, or anything else.

a reply to: Aazadan

Why don't they just take a hire pay and learn to invest and save like they should?

a reply to: onequestion

The issue is that there are over 200,000 retirees and less than 70,000 current employees. This is the same collapsing Ponzi scheme that Social Security is facing.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Yes exactly my point. That and many of the teamster shops have closed and gone to Mexico.

Every pension plan is going this direction. Wait until all the city and state pensions go belly up, they will scream for a goverment bailout. Long term viability was never taken into consideration.

originally posted by: avgguy
The beauty of unions, they'll "negotiate" a 2% raise for the workers and then line their pockets with the workers money and then "mis-manage" the funds, perfect.

It's the American way!

a reply to: Xeven

The union funds aren't being mid managed by the union.

The businesses in right to work states just hire temporary and none union workers so less and less members are actually paying in.

On top of that there are less and less union run shops as they continue to move over seas

I bet part of the deal is the Union officers didn't lose any of their pension.
It makes it easier to cut everyone else's lifeline.

originally posted by: onequestion
The union funds aren't being mid managed by the union.

This one was. They negotiated a deal where UPS could pull out of the pension fund which cost them between $650million to close to $1billion per year since 2007.

basing pensions SS and other funds on projections was a terrible idea. Millenials sure love the idea of a 7.5% wage redistribution to elder folks that they'll never see.

Would someone even want to join a teamster anymore? one's back would break from carrying that retiree load. It be like getting SS scammed twice.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

Oh wow.

I had already known a few years ago that they were having problems with the fund back then let alone making a move like that.

Their hands are tied.

a reply to: jellyrev

Millenials don't stand a chance in today's market. Now to add insult onto injury they are being taught common core.

originally posted by: onequestion
a reply to: Aazadan

Why don't they just take a hire pay and learn to invest and save like they should?

Because the companies make it sound like a great deal. Lets look at the auto workers. Detroit paid very well, offered pensions, and the employees still invested and saved. Then they all hit retirement age, 2008 hit, and the companies nearly went out of business. A large part of those investments were based on the companies stock value which tanked, and independent investments also tanked.

Another issue is that it's easy to compensate an employee with company stock because it's something the company already owns. This is common in startups but is often used to fund retirements as well. Employees are given stock with the company intending for them to sell it at some point. Well, that all goes to hell when we learn the company had a precarious financial state, was lying on reports, and that their stock is actually worthless.

On top of that, the stock market is a rigged game. As an individual you are more likely to lose money than gain money, even if you do everything right (unless you're good enough to invest professionally) with diversification but inflation also ensures that you can't actually save money, you have to be spending it on something that has higher returns than inflation which at some point means trusting a company to not screw you over long term... a strategy that has since been proven to not work.

Edit: Also, as others have pointed out, it's just not mathematically sound. You cannot have an ever increasing number of people to support while having a declining work force. The idea was supposed to be that the company managed and invested proceeds from that employee's work and paid them back out over time once the pension was due. That wasn't profitable though, instead they moved to the model of making the current workers support the past workers. An idea that only works when the pyramid isn't inverted, and an idea that is completely unsustainable. Longer lifespans aren't helping matters either, pensions were designed to support people for 10 years and now they have to last 30.

Honestly, it's probably going to force the whole basic income issue because it's either going to be that, or that very few in the US are ever going to be able to retire. Forget the American dream of a family and a home, the new dream is going to be maybe being able to retire at age 90.

originally posted by: Aazadan
On top of that, the stock market is a rigged game.

If I buy an issue, hold for a period of time and then sell it for more than I paid how did the rigged game affect me?