"A watchdog group for the union, which has 1.3 million members nationwide, said it believes the Local 20 president was forced out because of the independent investigation. But Mr. Lichtenwald, 62, said he is leaving for pragmatic reasons because retiring now affords him several years with a full pension. After that, he and 273,000 Teamster pensioners likely will face a serious loss of benefits if a union pension fund goes broke as expected."
The gull of so many of these Teamster officials like this piece of crap have. Notice how he neglects to mention anything about all those other pensions that he will be receiving. All those years thinking he was above and better than the members and now he wants others to actually believe that he will be suffering right along with his Brothers and Sisters. For the money he will be receiving from the CSPF won't even be worth the trip to the mailbox compared to all that money that he will be getting for all those other pensions. This reporter should some more time researching before he prints a story so everyone gets the whole picture. Who knows, that was probably intentional to leave that part out because the whole article just dictates Lichtenwald's point of view.
"After one of the review board’s three members said he would not pursue internal union charges against Mr. Lichtenwald if the Local 20 leader cooperated with investigators, the international union learned the panel still intended to charge Mr. Lichtenwald with several violations. If convicted, the penalties could affect his benefits."
That's the problem in America today, the government doesn't aggressively pursue charges for white collar crime and even when they do, all they get is a slap on the hand in most cases. That's why these atrocities committed against the American workers occur and will continue to do so.
“When the government turned down the pension plan, I knew it was time to retire,” Mr. Lichtenwald told The Blade."
You're darn right there because he now knows there will be a thorough investigation into the matter since the members wouldn't just voluntarily accept getting screwed by accepting the cuts, well, most members anyway.
In my opinion, he should be tarred and feathered and drummed right out of the union and denied any and all benefits! Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so cold hearted and let him keep 40% of the CSPF. After all, he was trying to convince others to accept the cuts so he should be thrilled about getting to keep that.