I think this may be only the second time , since Red Star shut down in 2004, that I can agree with you on part of your many anti-Teamster posts. But would you call our TENJ pension a ponzi scheme if the congress hadn't screwed things up? Do you remember back in the 80s when we were close to being fully funded? Do you remember that it was congress that passed the laws that would have penalized us for fully or over funding the plan? Not having extra funds set aside for the down years. Having to raise the accrual and assessorial benefits or have any reserves penalized.
Do you remember that congress set the PBGC premiums for the SEPFs and MEPFs? Do you remember when then PBGC Directer Joshua Gotbaum pleaded with congress for a PBGC premium increase? Do you remember that congress approved the increase for the Single Employer Pension Funds but said the Multi Employer Pension Funds were in better shape and didn't need an increase?
In this months AARP Bulletin it says that the PBGC's maximum annual benefit for retirees in failed single employer plans is $67,295. But the PBGC's maximum annual benefit for retirees in failed multiemployer plans is only $12,870. I'd say that congress screwed up the PBGC too.
I agree that the failure of the Teamsters to organize any new LTL freight companies hurt our pension funds. But I put the blame squarely on the lawmakers in congress who wrote the Motor Carrier Act of 1980. Congress deregulated the trucking industry. It wrote the bankruptcy laws that classifies the company's unfunded pension liability as unsecured creditors and we go to the bottom of the list and rarely get paid.................Will you agree that the blame for the failing pension funds or ponzi scheme rests mainly on the congress?
You hit the proverbial Nail on the Head.....with a Sledgehammer.....
And,....the conclusion we draw from this,......is that Congress has been paid to have an.....agenda......to ruin MEPFs.
In other words,....we've been Plotted Against.
Who benefits from the failure of MEPFs? Wall Street bankers wrote editorials of the..."Hazards"...of letting Unions have Large blocks of.."unregulated stocks".......
....to be directed by the Union members who Own those stocks to do...."social engineering"......
....thereby upsetting Wall Street "predictions" of who, and why money would be invested......
Our Fund had about 200,000 shares of Union Pacific during the Overnite organizing debacle in the '90's.......A motion was made on the floor of one of the Union Locals,...to direct the Trustees to....."divest our Fund" of that stock......because it was ...morally reprehensible to fund the parent company that was actively fighting the Union organizing effort.
You'da thought I'd asked them to wrench their liver out without anesthesia .........."Morals Don't Apply In The Marketplace!" I was told......And why not? Selling our collective Souls for a...."mess of pottage"?(..Biblical.....look it up..)....
Funding .....with our own money.....the very people who are trying to .....defeat Unions?
I saw a conflict of....Moral Principle.....Other people saw Raw, Naked Profit........
Wall Street saw a ....threat.....
The Jury is still out on 401(k)s........May of 1998 was the first time defined-contrbution "pensions" exceeded defined-benefit pensions, as a Private Industry retirement option. The first Large Group of solely 401(k) funded retirees is....just now....starting to happen.....
........and I see quite a bit of ..."information"....in print and media, about what to do "if you run out of ...Money....in retirement"
........And,....a big push from many directions,...including Government,.......to "hold off retirement"...until 65,70,...or later.....
That's all well and good,....if you're a desk jockey,....or in some soft-handed, low-stress job,...where your worst Worker's Compensation Claim,....would be a Paper cut,.....or a Stapler-related injury.....
Not so much in Trucking,........the Nation's leader in Fatal Occupational Injuries....(....8 times as many Truck Drivers die in the Line of Duty as Policemen and Firemen combined....)....
So,.....you retire from your High-Stress, High-Hazard trucking job on a 401(k)........and you run out of money in 10 years.....
What do you do?..........Back to....Work? No PBGI,....No "survivor's benefits" for your family.....no monthly check no matter what your financial shape?........No shysters trying to....cheat you....out of your "nest egg"?
Congress,.....and most all Public Sector employees.....are retiring on defined-benefit pensions........
If they are so.....Terrible.........Why?