Government paves way for multi-employer pension plan cuts
Source: AP-Excite
By ANDREW TAYLOR
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is preparing to cut benefits over the next few years for hundreds of thousands of retirees covered by underfunded multi-employer private pension plans.
The Obama administration announced on Wednesday that well-known mediator Kenneth Feinberg review applications from pension plans under a law passed last year. The law would cut benefits as a last ditch means to stave off insolvency of troubled plans such as the huge Teamsters Central State Fund.
The new law earned mixed reviews from the unions whose members are covered by such defined benefit plans, including construction workers, Teamster truckers and food service workers.
The Teamsters and AARP opposed the law when it passed last year as part of a governmentwide spending bill. But other unions saw it as a solution that was preferable to plans becoming insolvent and getting a federal bailout.
FULL story at link.
FILE - In this July 17, 2014 file photo, attorney Kenneth Feinberg testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The government is preparing to cut benefits over the next few years for hundreds of thousands of retirees covered by underfunded multi-employer private pension plans. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew named Feinberg, an attorney, to review applications for fairness. Feinberg has administered the compensation funds for claims from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and from families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. (AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, file)
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20150617/us--pensions-cuts-7da4545f2e.html
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while the poor man pays the band 
Every corporation starting with Airlines, which I am quite familiar with always, and I mean always have under funded there pension programs.
Just about every corporation in America has under funded there Defined Pension Plans--------why do you think they went to the proverbial 401K scheme, and that really is a scheme ( no protections--your on your own with Wall Street-----------just imagine Social Security)
They would file there:
www.sec.gov/answers/form10k.htm
They would take the pension money they were suppose to be putting into the plan to meet the negotiated contract requirement of the contracted worker and they would then take our share of the pension money which we paid into the plan every pay check and then use the pension money fund as a piggy bank to show the Sec 10K filing in the prospectus as being funded.
The prospectus is the key---------always
We would have these big meetings in the hanger and they would get up and tell us the funds were protected and that the funds were all there-------------no they weren't.
The only way they were protected was the ERISA laws and the PBGC----------apparently not anymore--------------thanks a lot for nothing
www.erisa.com
pbgc.gov
They were being used by the likes of Carl Icahn, Frank Lorenzo, Steven Wolf, Seth E. Schofield, for example and any other CEO that came through the door.
www.nytimes.com/1990/...pact-with-agency-assures-pension-payments.html
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/09/nwa-s19.html
www.nytimes.com/1992/10/26/business/twa-pension-fund-dispute.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/united-airlines-employees-shorted-pensions-agency-errors_n_1122797.html
And the Unions would scream and the courts all of them would say basically nothing
http://cf.alpa.org/mec/aaa/docs/newmectoday/arc/airwaves/aw0107/Negot0701.pdf
www.aflcio.org/About/Exec-Council/EC-Statements/Protecting..
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/pension_fund_capitalism.html
And now we have this corporate guru come in and say this is the plan --------------take it or leave it
He is going to make critical decisions on individuals such as myself when it comes to my pensions that was PROMISED.
I paid for and took big cuts in my pensions when they were turned over the PBGC because the airlines used the bankruptcy laws to shirk there god damn responsibilities.
And like any and other corporation filing for bankruptcy its for one thing-----------gut pensions--------they never FULLY funded the plans-----------they shoved it unto the entire public, they placed the funds into the government, and the government would go to the same jerks that broke the pension fund and make a deal--------you that have never worked in the industry.
They were defaulted, and robbed, and this guru , he is going to say, just like he did down in the Gulf, basically, he could not and would not hold BP accountable to lost lively hoods-------take it or leave it-------a real true welfare protecting corporate czar.
Over 15,000 airline employees were affected by 9/11, they were laid-off (me ------United 2001), fired, didn't have enough seniority etcetera ............ have not been recalled to jobs once held, and some of us never were ever able to file a claim for losing our lively hoods and now our pensions are under attack, the ones we paid into with our labor of making a corporation money and for us to have money then and into the future------------our last acts of livelihood that we paid for, for our families to live on after some us are gone
If anyone thinks that voting for a republican and DINO'S is going to solve your problems -----------------just look at what they can and will do with planned your retirement -------------they just don't care.
