April 17, 2008: Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a movement of Teamsters who want to make our union stronger and more accountable to working and retired Teamsters.

We believe our pension funds belong to the members and are a key element of Teamster power and Teamster pride.

We work to support and strengthen our Teamster pension funds. We work to defeat employers’ moves to break out of pension funds, and other corporate attacks on good pensions for working America. We fought the passage of the Pension Protection Act (PPA) because we knew the problems it would cause our funds. We opposed the move by UPS to split the Central States Fund.

We take legal action to defend pension rights. We successfully led the fight to loosen up unfair “reemployment rules” in the Central States Fund. We have gone to court to defend members’ pensions and to hold pension trustees accountable to the members.

We work to enforce the members’ Right to Know. We successfully lobbied for the positive part of the Pension Protection Act, which requires funds to provide more information to members. We successfully sued the Central States Fund to require them to provide (previously secret) quarterly financial reports. We hold educational programs for Teamsters on our funds and our pension rights.

We helped lead the battle to win 25-and-out and 30-and-out benefits for hundreds of thousands of Teamsters. Now we are working to defend those benefits. Recently when the Local 804 fund tried to eliminate 25-and-out for new hires, TDU members and other Teamsters organized and stopped that give-away.

If you are concerned about your Teamster pension, we invite you to join TDU. We are Teamsters working together to protect our pensions and our union for the future.

Click here to join TDU today.