Posted on 12/30/2014 7:16:07 PM PST by grundle
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union is a heavyweight on the labor scene. It pays its president $350,000 a year. It’s holding its next executive board meeting in February at a swanky beachfront resort in Hollywood, Florida. And it just doled out nearly $8 million to influence the last election and lobby Washington.
But when it comes to standing by the obligation unions made to provide pensions to retirees, UFCW pleaded poverty in persuading Congress to let chronically underfunded union pension plans cut the benefits of workers, including those already retired.
“Declining participation and factors like the Great Recession have created a new reality for Taft-Hartley multiemployer plans wherein many of them are substantially underfunded,” departing UFCW President Joseph T. Hansen wrote to the House Education and the Workforce Committee in a letter this month.
“The simple fact is that in order to save some of the most vulnerable pension plans trustees must be given the ability to slightly reduce benefits. This is the only realistic way to avoid insolvency and preserve as much of the promised pension benefits as possible,” the union boss wrote in a letter urging lawmakers to allow underfunded union pension plans to cut promised benefits.
Numerous other unions, many of them big spenders on the political front, also lobbied for the concession.
Congress obliged in a last-minute deal approved by lawmakers as they fled town for Christmas break. On Dec. 15, President Obama signed the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 into law, empowering any multiemployer pension fund — commonly managed by unions — to cut benefits for workers and current retirees if the plan is 20 percent or more underfunded.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The unions use the retirement funds to get the dems elected to office.
They’re going to hear from a lot of Grumpy Old Men and Women. They will be raising Cain (or cane).
Who could not see this coming?
Wait... apparently the union members
Silly workers. The purpose of the Union is to pay the Democrat Party.
If Pacific Gas and Electric or Humana tried this, their CEO would be up on charges.
But since it’s a labor union doing it, it’s much more like “tough noogies you blue-collar suckers.”
Serves them right for funding Democrats lo these many years.
One of the ways to “break” unions would be to require that they honor their pension obligations.
Whatever happened to the concept of fiduciary responsibility?
The Unions should have been putting funds away to protect these pensioners from this outcome.
If they weren’t, then the union should be prosecuted and disbanded.
In some unions retirees can still vote for officers.
That’s pretty heartless to say since not all union members vote or support democrats. A lot of innocent people will be hurt by this crony move.
I agree, and I’m even taking politics out of it. This is wrong.
I may not agree with union promises, but once they make them, they should have to live by them.
These pensioners did their part. They can’t start over. This simply is not right.
Besides, unions are notorious for stealing pension funds. It's a cliche.
Stop paying dues... What? Is the union going to fire you? Who writes your paycheck? More and more states become right-to-work states... anyone have any stories about peoplenexcersicing that right? I seem to recall a fellow conservative friend with a PhD in Physics that became a HS science teacher in Indiana... he refused to join the teachers union on principle... something to the effect that he was “allowed” to contract directly with the school board for his position. I may be completely mistaken, but I am.pretty sure that’s how it went down.
For about 20 years my uncle was a member of the Baker’s union in Chicago, when he was ready to retire and collect his pension, he was told there was nothing there. He had to work for another 13 years and worked about 20 hours a week until he passed away at age 77.
Yeah, but I bet he found a lot of solace in the knowledge that the President of the Bakers Union, the Treasurer, and their close Bakers Union cronies were living high on the hog, eating in the best restaurants in Chicago, and hobnobbing with city government bigwigs while he was busting his ass instead of enjoying his retirement.
They need a couple of nasty-faced lawyers.
Wow would I be PO’d if I was in that union. My dues going to pay lobbyists! Going to swanky resorts? Imagine how many retirees could have been funded for 8 million. Criminal.
Doesn’t apply to “sacred” gov’t employee unions as their pensions are covered by taxpayers.
Understand that, to become law, it also had to pass a Republican House of Representatives...
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