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A Fight Builds Over Multi-Employer Pensions
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 Nov. 14, 2013 | PENSIONS | As Congress inches toward proposing legislation that would arguably enable the most significant changes to private pension law in decades, opposition from organized labor is slowly mounting. In addition to the Machinists, the first union to come out strongly against the proposal, the Teamsters, Steelworkers and Boilermakers are now raising concerns…The proposal is controversial because it would breach the so-called “anti-cutback” rules of the 1974 Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and its 1980 amendment, which prohibits trustees from slashing accrued benefits to current retirees…“The Teamsters believe that we have to protect the integrity of our pension system, that these workers earned these benefits and they deserve to be paid,” [Teamster spokesperson Bret] Caldwell said. “And we’ve got to find a way to do that. If Congress can bail out the banks and these bank CEOs can continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars off the backs of taxpayers, then we think that retirees deserve to be protected.” Full story at In These Times.
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