March 13, 2015: Bob Amsden, a retired Local 200 Teamster, isn’t sitting by while Central States ponders pension cuts. He got involved in forming the Wisconsin Committee to Protect Pensions and helped to organize a recent Milwaukee meeting that attracted over 60 retirees, spouses, and active Teamsters. Amsden recently spoke with a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The story ended up being a front page article. 

Many active and retired Teamsters don’t know of the pending benefit cuts. You can help inform the thousands that may face cuts in the coming months. Contact local newspapers and reporters. Tell them the importance of this story. Write a letter to the editor. Use the local media to help spread the news. 

March 3, 2015: The Central States Pension Fund and several smaller funds in the months to come may seek to cut the earned benefits of retirees and active Teamsters. Teamster members have a right to know what the procedures would be, so that we can be better armed to fight back.

A detailed outline of the procedure and timeline is available here for review by concerned members and retirees. This outline explains that the process cannot be immediate; the law provides time for review, for the publication of opposition statements, a vote by all participants (active and retired), and in the case of large funds at least 10,000 participants, the appointment of a retiree representative.

Teamsters are not sitting back and waiting for the hammer to come down – retirees and active Teamsters are organizing now to change the law that requires the full burden of the economic meltdown to fall on working and retired Teamsters.

Last weekend the Wisconsin Committee to Protect Pensions held their latest meeting, with a representative of the North East Ohio Committee to Protect Pensions on board to speak. The meeting received a strong statement of support from Congresswoman Gwen Moore of Milwaukee. We are working to build a strong list of Congresspersons and Senators ready to make changes to the unjust law.

Dale Dobbs, a Milwaukee Local 200 retiree, explained “We’ve set up a Facebook page to share info and concerns about the possible pension cuts. We’ve got a committee organized in our area to make sure our voices are heard. We need to build a pressure campaign with committees from other areas.”

Could your pension fund move to cut benefits? This list indicates which pension funds could consider cuts. In addition to the Central States Fund, the list includes Western Pennsylvania Teamsters Fund and a large number of small funds in the New York - New Jersey area, especially locals in declining industries. 

Join us and help build the movement to defend pensions

Whit Wyatt of Washington Court House worked as a teamster truck driver for 33 years. Now Whit and his wife Barb have a comfortable retirement living on Whit's teamster pension and social security.

But Wyatt is one of hundreds of thousands of union retirees who may soon see severe cuts to their monthly pension checks. “I've planned my life around my guaranteed pension and it just looks like that's going to be taken away," Wyatt said.

Click here to read more.

Bill Hendershot and his wife live on his union pension and Social Security. Hendershot, a retired Consolidated Freightways long-distance truck driver, gets around now in a 12-year-old Toyota Corolla. The couple still pay a mortgage on their home in Canal Fulton.

And he’s among a huge group of union retirees nationwide who could see their monthly private pension payments cut as much as 60 percent under a national reform measure signed into law in December by President Barack Obama.

Click here to read more.

Some multiemployer pension fund executives are trying to figure out whether to take advantage of a controversial new reform law that allows potential benefit cuts for participants and retirees. Others are hoping for further reforms to allow for alternative plan designs.

The Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 — passed swiftly in December — allows deeply underfunded plans to take unprecedented steps to avoid insolvency but comes with strings attached. It also gives federal regulators some new tactics that could help save troubled multiemployer plans (Pensions & Investments, Dec. 22).

Click here to read more at Pensions & Investments.

February 5, 2015: Teamsters in Southern California held a packed meeting to build a campaign to elect new International Union leaders. Next up: Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio on Feb. 21-22.

Teamsters in the Midwest have been hammered with contract concessions and the threat of pension cuts. Now members are coming together to organize for new leadership and a new direction for our union.

Members are holding meetings to gear up for the International Union election in Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio for the weekend of February 21-22.

Featured speakers include Tony Jones, the President of Columbus Local 413, Fred Zuckerman, President of Louisville Local 89, and Tim Sylvester, President of New York Local 804.

In the last International Union election, the opposition forces were divided.

This time, Sylvester, Zuckerman, Jones and other Teamster leaders are building a coalition effort that is uniting Teamsters, including former Hoffa supporters, in a united movement for change.

Freight, UPS and UPS Freight Teamsters are leading the effort in Ohio and are reaching out to Teamsters in other jurisdictions.

Retired Teamsters, concerned about the pension issue, are also getting involved. They want International Union leadership that will fight for retirement security. 

February 4, 2015: Could your benefits be cut under the new Pension Cut legislation? Find out here.

The Central States Pension Fund is not the only Teamster pension plan where retirees may be threatened with benefit cuts because of the new pension law pushed through Congress in December.

The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has compiled a list of 100 plans that may be permitted to cut benefits as a result of the new pension law. Several Teamster funds are on the list.  

Click here to download a copy of the report.

Join up with other Teamsters to protect our pensions.

Follow us at www.facebook.org/teamstersforademocraticunion

February 4, 2015: Teamster members are making their voices heard about the threats to our pensions. 

John Raffiani is sick about what may happen to his Central States Pension but that’s not holding him back from doing something about it. He contacted a reporter at the Albany Times Union and made sure the pension cuts story made headlines in his city.

Check out the coverage in the Albany Times Union.

The pension cuts story needs to be told in cities and communities across the country--and you can help. Your story is important and TDU will work with you to get it out to the press and to the public.  

Call TDU Organizer Peter Landon at (313) 842-2600 for more information.

Teamster members and retirees are coming together to defend our pensions.

Contact TDU to get involved and help organize a pension meeting in your area. We can help, including with guest speakers who can help explain pension issues and what’s next for the pension protection campaign.

Follow us at www.facebook.org/teamstersforademocraticunion

February 3, 2015: A review of the 3^rd quarter 2014 financial report of the Central States Pension Fund shows that the fund has $18 billion as of September 30, 2014.

The information is detailed in the quarterly Financial and Analytical Report and the Independent Special Counsel Report. 

Compared to the previous year, the fund saw a net investment income decline of $1.2 billion but it was offset slightly by a $94 million net increase in operating income. The report provides no explanation for the investment income downturn though it states that Trustees met with the named fiduciary, Northern Trust.

The report, filed January 26, 2015, mentions passage of the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 but states, “it is too soon to assess the potential impact of this complex legislation on the Pension Fund.”

Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) is working to fight any pension cuts and build a movement for pension justice. 

Click here to get involved.

Sign up for email updates at tdu.org and like us on facebook

Anyone who thinks that congressional votes, federal regulations and the machinations of Wall Street have no bearing on their day-to-day lives should talk to John Raffiani Sr.

The Greene County resident is getting a hard lesson in what could be called the downside of deregulation, the decline of unions and the lingering effects of the 2008 recession.

He's one of at least 50 retired Capital Region truck drivers facing a deep cut in their monthly retirement checks due to looming shortfalls in their union pension funds.

The cuts will be allowed thanks to an amendment that was tucked into the most recent federal budget, which was approved by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in December.

About 100,000 New Yorkers who depend on a variety of private-sector union pensions could be facing lowered payments in coming years.

And while the pension fund that Raffiani relies on, the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund, is the most prominent and most threatened pension fund right now, the amendment opens the door for potential future cuts to an estimated 10 million retirees nationwide who are enrolled in "multi-employer" pension plans.

Raffiani and others want to know how such a measure was folded into the larger budget rather than debated on its own. "I worked hard for 35 years," said the 68-year-old. "I paid a lot of money over time into that fund."


Raffiani was a Teamster "car hauler," a truck driver who specialized in transporting new cars to dealerships around the Northeast. 

Everyone has seen them — the big rigs with double-decker trailers laden with shiny new vehicles.

In the trucking world, this is an elite group: Drivers not only deliver the valuable cars, but they need to get them on and off their trailers without a scratch. Raffiani and his fellow drivers transported cars from the vast rail yards in Selkirk to dealerships across the region.

He was enrolled in the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund, which has more than $17 billion in assets. Despite that, a confluence of trends threatens the fund's long-term solvency.

Since the trucking industry was deregulated in 1980, there have been fewer big companies paying into the plan, and even fewer union drivers contributing to the fund. Add in the lingering hit from the 2008 financial crash and the plan, which now pays $4 in retirement funds for every dollar it's collecting, is facing long-term peril.

As a result, the fund's managers sought and got permission from Congress to make the cuts if needed.

Raffiani says his approximately $3,000 monthly pension could be cut almost in half.
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It should be a while before that occurs, according to the union, but most expect it to happen by 2016.

Raffiani got into the car hauling business almost by chance, and he stuck with it as he gained experience and seniority.

He began driving concrete trucks after high school, but that was seasonal. When he got the chance to haul cars, he jumped.

In his best years, Raffiani earned more than $50,000 with benefits. Some drivers made twice that if they were willing to drive all the time and spend weeks away from home.

It was never easy, though. As well as driving for 10 hours at a stretch, car haulers have to load the new vehicles on their trailers, then chain them securely in place. It can take a few minutes or few hours, said Raffiani, depending on the vehicles. The job also requires clambering around a double-decker trailer in all kinds of weather, day and night, using heavy steel rods or tie-down bars to secure the chains holding the cars.

"The bars do a number on you," Raffiani said, adding that all the fellow car haulers he knows have chronic shoulder problems. "That bar could slip and knock out your teeth."

He remembers the time another hauler lost four fingers when a rod slipped in a particularly bad way. 

Another driver died after he was pinned between two cars he was unloading in Newburgh. A Canadian hauler slipped off his trailer one frigid night near the border and landed on his head.

Raffiani considers himself lucky: He got out with the usual shoulder pain and only three hernia operations.

He traveled mostly in New York and New England, although some trips took him as far as Montana and Oklahoma.

Shortly after he started in the business, he noticed an odd phenomenon to which he didn't give much thought at the time.

The companies that had contracts to haul cars seemed to be endlessly changing, especially after deregulation. 

They were being taken private or public. Or going bankrupt and reorganizing under different names or owners.

Raffiani has a hard time keeping all his employers straight — many don't exist any more, or have gone through numerous iterations.

He started his career with Anchor Motor Freight and then went to Leaseway. Then it was NuCar. After that he was at M&G Convoy, Automobile Transport and Ryder, and so on.

Some of the firms didn't seem well-managed. He recalls one that got a contract with an unusually low bid — it turned out the Georgia-based owners didn't realize there are road tolls in New York and New England. "Right away, they were in serious trouble," he said.

In retrospect, the game of musical trucks resulted from deregulation. Prior to the 1980s, car hauling was governed by strict federal rules about where trucks could or couldn't go. That limited the competition. Deregulation, especially the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, meant more and more people could enter the business. That may have helped lower shipping costs, but with an ever-expanding list of companies, the pay for the drivers fell and union shops became less competitive.

"Pretty much anybody could haul what they wanted when they wanted to,'' said Raffiani.

For pension funds like the Central States, which has 411,000 members, one result was that fewer and fewer drivers are paying into the plan. Currently, Central States has just one active employee for every five retirees.

Raffiani isn't sure how many fellow retirees know about the looming cuts. He's been trying to get the word out and has spoken with groups like Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which has criticized the union's leadership on this issue.

The Washington, D.C.-based Pension Rights Center is keeping track of the possible cuts and they are pushing the union to keep searching for alternatives.

AARP has sounded the alarm as well, saying they are worried about the precedent it could set.

Some criticize the way the amendment, which was pushed through by Republican Rep. John Kline of Minnesota and Democrat George Miller of California, was inserted into the larger budget bill. They say that had it been a stand-alone measure, there would have at least been more debate.

"Because it was attached to what many viewed as 'must-pass' legislation, many believe there was no choice," said Joellen Leavelle, outreach manager for the Pension Rights Center.

"Whether or not they even knew what they were voting for is another story," Raffiani said of the lawmakers who voted for the overall budget package.

In the aftermath, Raffiani is considering his options. He has renewed his hazardous materials license, which would allow him to drive a fuel truck — at his age, he doesn't want to climb around on car hauler trailers. He drives a school bus part time and refurbishes vacuum cleaners on the side, and thinks about ramping up that business.

He's also looking at opening a small cafe with his wife, who he says is a top-notch cook.

Raffiani has two children in the area, including a son who joined the Air Force years ago. He's already retired with a secure government pension in Georgia, where heating costs and taxes are fraction of what Raffiani pays.

"I've been sick ever since this happened," Raffiani said.