Pensions Targeted by Senate Republicans' Plan -- Protect Yours With a Quick Email!

Days ago, two Republican U.S. Senators released a plan to devastate pension plans. This plan could push Local 150's pension from the "Green Zone" all the way into the "Red Zone" with the stroke of a pen. We must fight against the Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization and Reform Plan (MPRRP) by telling our Senators that it is a thinly-veiled attempt to destroy healthy pension plans.

Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) chair the powerful Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. They are calling this devastating plan "pension reform," but it could immediately reduce our Pension Fund's funding level from 82 percent to less than 65 percent. Negative impacts of this plan include the following:

  • Limiting the returns we can assume, which would reduce our funding percentage by nearly 20 percent
  • Require us to implement a Funding Improvement Plan (reintroducing the need for "bucket" funds and lowered multipliers)
  • Current retirees' pension checks would be taxed by 5% to pay for bailouts of failing funds
  • By putting us in the "red zone," the law would force us to reduce pension benefits for current and future retirees
  • Increase federal pension insurance premiums from $29 per participant to as much as $330 per participant - more than a tenfold increase that would cost the Pension Fund almost $10 million annually
  • Introduce a new tax of more than $375,000 on Local 150 and a matching tax on our employers

The plan is being sold as an attempt to rescue participants of failing funds, including the Teamsters Central States Fund, but it would guarantee the decline of healthy and recovering plans.

In returning our fund to health over the past decade, we have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to let the government just walk in and steal it from us. History has shown us that every time the federal government comes in to "help" with pensions, it makes things far worse. This plan would hurt us more than the financial collapse of 2008 ever did.

Take a moment to send emails to your Senators! It will only take a moment, but each voice against this shameful attack will help show these legislators the true harm of this plan. Enter your contact information and an email will be created for you to send the Senators from your state.

There is no time to waste, so do this right now!


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