Freightmaster1
TB Legend
- Credits
- 602
Check out this story by Nick Thornton and posted on Benefitspro.com.
Union pensions: Will Congress kick the can on a solution?
Pension activist Mike Walden and thousands of other pensioners are in the battle of a lifetime. Will Congress help them?
By Nick Thornton | November 16, 2018 at 04:17 PM
Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and their supporters attend a rally in 2016. Their Central States Pension Fund, of which Mike Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years. (Photo: Bloomberg)
Eleven months into a scheduled 13-month deployment, the Marines in Mike Walden’s unit began carrying a deck of cards in the field. They were 52 days out from going home; for each day that passed, a card was pulled from the deck, memorializing the end that was in sight.
By the end of the card deck, Walden, a .50-caliber machine gunner, and his unit weren’t going anywhere.
“When you get down to your last card and you’re still there, you get a little nervous,” recalls the Akron, Ohio native, who passed on a wrestling scholarship to enlist in the Marine Corps after high school.
“It was a war zone,” he says unceremoniously. “We couldn’t get out.”
Walden’s arrival in Vietnam synced with the North Vietnamese TET Offensive, the months-long siege on South Vietnam that began in 1968 and marked some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
He doesn’t describe himself as what he clearly is—a patriot. Instead, Walden says he and a few classmates made a calculated decision to enlist. “It was the height of the war. We decided, ‘Why don’t we just sign up before we get drafted. If we live, we can come back and decide our future then’.”
Walden returned after 15 months in Vietnam. He lingered for a bit in the Marine Corps stateside. He was made a “brig chaser” — prison guard — and later staged mock beach landings off the USS Newport News.
Eventually he left the Marine Corps and returned to Akron to go to college. He started his own transportation company, then was offered an office position with Roadway Express.
He opted for a position driving. Walden joined the Teamsters, and spent the next 31 years as a line haul driver. “It was a good paycheck,” he says matter-of-factly.
The health benefits were solid. So was the promise of a secure retirement.
Tip of the spear
These days, Walden, a grandfather of nine who is staring down his septuagenarian years, is again at the tip of the spear. This time the battle has no bullets, but Walden, along with thousands of other pensioners, spends most of his waking hours warning anyone who will listen of its life and death implications.
In the retirement industry, the plight of more than 10 million pensioners in collectively bargained retirement plans is known, if not well known.
Without intervention from the federal government and taxpayers, the Central States Pension Fund, of which Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years.
When the dominoes start to fall, so too will the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency charged with insuring single and multiemployer plans when they fail.
Geoff Manville, a principal on the government relations team at Mercer, is as dialed in as they come on retirement issues on Capitol Hill. The multiemployer pension crisis is “the elephant in the room,” says Manville.
“It’s the biggest issue facing Congress,” he says— referring not just to retirement policy, but all issues.
Awareness of the elephant has come a long way in a short time, and now extends beyond the lawmakers on the committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over retirement policy. That attention is due to the grassroots efforts of Walden and thousands of retired union workers.
“Mike is a force of nature,” said Karen Friedman, executive vice president and policy director of the Pension Rights Center. “He’s a leader. But he recognizes he’s just one of thousands of people throughout this movement. These guys went from being retired truck drivers, and miners, and iron workers to being among the most effective, sophisticated advocates we’ve ever seen on Capitol Hill.”
In a sense Walden is a reluctant leader. He stayed active in the Teamsters after retiring in 2011, and became a trustee of the Local 24 Retirees Club. Then in 2013, a policy paper, “Solutions Not Bailouts,” emerged from the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans.
In order to secure the future solvency of pensions and continued employer participation in collectively bargained plans, the paper called for cuts to existing benefits that would leave retirees and participants with less than what they were scheduled to get, but more than they would receive under PBGC’s insurance.
“We received word they wanted to reduce our benefits and take away the anti-clawback provision,” said Walden. “There were some good things in the paper, but those two provisions scared me.”
Walden said he took the issue to other trustees at Local 24. “I said we need to get on defense now.” His sense of urgency wasn’t shared.
Over the next several months, Walden started voicing his concerns with other Teamsters, pension attorneys, and even traveled to Capitol Hill for an early hearing on the crisis.
His call for action met a fickle response, but in 2014, after a meeting with the Teamsters For A Democratic Union (TDU), a 12-member committee was created with the objective of pushing back on the prospect of pension cuts.
At its first meeting, the Northeast Ohio Committee to Protect Pensions was officially created. Walden agreed to become its president when no one else would. “I got stuck with that,” he says.
From there he “went to school,” spending his days and nights studying the legislative process, federal budgets, and the macroeconomic implications of thousands of retirees losing their pensions.
One of his main objectives was advocating for the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which was scheduled to sunset. Then, at the end of 2014, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law a budget that included the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, which gave the Treasury Department authority to rubberstamp benefit clawbacks in critical and declining pensions.
“They threw us under the bus, to pass something so ridiculous in the middle of the night with no input from retirees,” said Walden. “The first thing that came to my mind was, what was I fighting for in Vietnam?”
Union pensions: Will Congress kick the can on a solution?
Pension activist Mike Walden and thousands of other pensioners are in the battle of a lifetime. Will Congress help them?
By Nick Thornton | November 16, 2018 at 04:17 PM
Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and their supporters attend a rally in 2016. Their Central States Pension Fund, of which Mike Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years. (Photo: Bloomberg)
Eleven months into a scheduled 13-month deployment, the Marines in Mike Walden’s unit began carrying a deck of cards in the field. They were 52 days out from going home; for each day that passed, a card was pulled from the deck, memorializing the end that was in sight.
By the end of the card deck, Walden, a .50-caliber machine gunner, and his unit weren’t going anywhere.
“When you get down to your last card and you’re still there, you get a little nervous,” recalls the Akron, Ohio native, who passed on a wrestling scholarship to enlist in the Marine Corps after high school.
“It was a war zone,” he says unceremoniously. “We couldn’t get out.”
Walden’s arrival in Vietnam synced with the North Vietnamese TET Offensive, the months-long siege on South Vietnam that began in 1968 and marked some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
He doesn’t describe himself as what he clearly is—a patriot. Instead, Walden says he and a few classmates made a calculated decision to enlist. “It was the height of the war. We decided, ‘Why don’t we just sign up before we get drafted. If we live, we can come back and decide our future then’.”
Walden returned after 15 months in Vietnam. He lingered for a bit in the Marine Corps stateside. He was made a “brig chaser” — prison guard — and later staged mock beach landings off the USS Newport News.
Eventually he left the Marine Corps and returned to Akron to go to college. He started his own transportation company, then was offered an office position with Roadway Express.
He opted for a position driving. Walden joined the Teamsters, and spent the next 31 years as a line haul driver. “It was a good paycheck,” he says matter-of-factly.
The health benefits were solid. So was the promise of a secure retirement.
Tip of the spear
These days, Walden, a grandfather of nine who is staring down his septuagenarian years, is again at the tip of the spear. This time the battle has no bullets, but Walden, along with thousands of other pensioners, spends most of his waking hours warning anyone who will listen of its life and death implications.
In the retirement industry, the plight of more than 10 million pensioners in collectively bargained retirement plans is known, if not well known.
Without intervention from the federal government and taxpayers, the Central States Pension Fund, of which Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years.
When the dominoes start to fall, so too will the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency charged with insuring single and multiemployer plans when they fail.
Geoff Manville, a principal on the government relations team at Mercer, is as dialed in as they come on retirement issues on Capitol Hill. The multiemployer pension crisis is “the elephant in the room,” says Manville.
“It’s the biggest issue facing Congress,” he says— referring not just to retirement policy, but all issues.
Awareness of the elephant has come a long way in a short time, and now extends beyond the lawmakers on the committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over retirement policy. That attention is due to the grassroots efforts of Walden and thousands of retired union workers.
“Mike is a force of nature,” said Karen Friedman, executive vice president and policy director of the Pension Rights Center. “He’s a leader. But he recognizes he’s just one of thousands of people throughout this movement. These guys went from being retired truck drivers, and miners, and iron workers to being among the most effective, sophisticated advocates we’ve ever seen on Capitol Hill.”
In a sense Walden is a reluctant leader. He stayed active in the Teamsters after retiring in 2011, and became a trustee of the Local 24 Retirees Club. Then in 2013, a policy paper, “Solutions Not Bailouts,” emerged from the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans.
In order to secure the future solvency of pensions and continued employer participation in collectively bargained plans, the paper called for cuts to existing benefits that would leave retirees and participants with less than what they were scheduled to get, but more than they would receive under PBGC’s insurance.
“We received word they wanted to reduce our benefits and take away the anti-clawback provision,” said Walden. “There were some good things in the paper, but those two provisions scared me.”
Walden said he took the issue to other trustees at Local 24. “I said we need to get on defense now.” His sense of urgency wasn’t shared.
Over the next several months, Walden started voicing his concerns with other Teamsters, pension attorneys, and even traveled to Capitol Hill for an early hearing on the crisis.
His call for action met a fickle response, but in 2014, after a meeting with the Teamsters For A Democratic Union (TDU), a 12-member committee was created with the objective of pushing back on the prospect of pension cuts.
At its first meeting, the Northeast Ohio Committee to Protect Pensions was officially created. Walden agreed to become its president when no one else would. “I got stuck with that,” he says.
From there he “went to school,” spending his days and nights studying the legislative process, federal budgets, and the macroeconomic implications of thousands of retirees losing their pensions.
One of his main objectives was advocating for the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which was scheduled to sunset. Then, at the end of 2014, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law a budget that included the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, which gave the Treasury Department authority to rubberstamp benefit clawbacks in critical and declining pensions.
“They threw us under the bus, to pass something so ridiculous in the middle of the night with no input from retirees,” said Walden. “The first thing that came to my mind was, what was I fighting for in Vietnam?”
