In the News

ENDEAVOR — About 5,000 retirees facing cuts of up to 70 percent of their pensions are set to attend a rally Thursday in Washington, D.C., at a time when opposition groups are reporting receptiveness to the issue among those in Congress.

 

“I think this is huge. We’ve invited everybody to this rally,” Bernie Anderson of the Milwaukee chapter of Protect Pensions said Monday. “We’re telling senators and congressmen all you have to do is walk across the street and talk to us.”

 

Anderson spoke Saturday at the Endeavor Protect Pensions committee, from which an estimated 50 people will attend Thursday’s rally to protest legislation that lets distressed funds like Central States slash pension checks. The Endeavor committee is one of more than 50 from across the U.S. and meets on the second Saturday of each month in the Endeavor/Moundville fire station.

 

Speakers at Thursday’s rally in Washington will include presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Gwen Moore, both Wisconsin Democrats, among several others. The rally begins at 11 a.m. and is expected to last two to three hours.

 

Recent developments have lifted the spirits of many Protect Pensions members, Anderson said, including a meeting on March 18 with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Ryan met with seven Milwaukee chapter members, telling them he agrees they’re “getting a raw deal,” Anderson said. Protect Pensions leaders will meet with Ryan’s chief of staff today in Washington for further discussion of the issue.

 

Protect Pensions groups in the past had struggled to set meetings with several lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., but Anderson noted meetings are now set for today with both Johnson and Baldwin in Washington.

 

“The general optimism is we have them all listening,” Anderson said, noting a Senate Finance Committee hearing on March 1, one that “no one saw coming.” That hearing included testimony from Rita Lewis, the wife of late Protect Pensions founder and retired trucker Butch Lewis, who died in December of a heart attack said to be related to stress over pension cuts.

 

Protect Pensions leaders have said testimony from Rita Lewis may have been what marked the beginning of recent momentum and receptiveness in Washington. After the hearing it was announced the Government Accountability Board would likely be investigating the U.S. Department of Labor, which Anderson said had the biggest role in oversight of Central States’ pension funds.

 

Endeavor committee members since forming in November have delivered thousands of letters to lawmakers, an effort that will impact elections, leader Bob Brockway said.

 

“They’ll lose votes if they don’t come to our side,” Brockway said Monday. “We made a pledge card to back anybody who’s helping us in our cause.

 

“We’re not going to stop until this is all over — until we win. We’ll keep fighting forever.”

 

Two bills currently in congressional committees include the Pensions Accountability Act and the Keep Our Promised Pensions Act, introduced by Sanders.

 

“With all the letter writing and phone calls … the general consensus is we have everybody listening to us, finally, and we think something is going to get changed,” Anderson said. “We don’t know what or how, but we’re hoping.”

 

With billions of dollars in liabilities, Central States is the first fund to use the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act in an alleged attempt to save itself from going broke. Central States claims its funds will be insolvent in 15 years, Anderson said, which led it to draft a recovery plan that would affect 400,000 retirees in the U.S., including an estimated 25,000 in Wisconsin.

 

A federal decision on Central States’ recovery plan is expected May 7, for which the U.S. Treasury Department appointed Washington attorney Ken Feinberg to review the application. Should Feinberg approve the plan, pension cuts are expected to begin in July.

 

“The biggest thing was informing all the Congress people what was in this bill, because I guarantee you 95 percent of them didn’t know what was in it,” Anderson said. MPRA was “hidden” in Congress’ omnibus spending bill in 2014, and “about 95 percent” of the representatives who voted for it likely never read the bill.

 

The midnight move effectively did away with ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974), which had guaranteed pensions.

 

“The communists couldn’t have thought of a lousier way to set up a vote,” Anderson said.

 

Protect Pensions groups consider Central States’ plan as one that would create a domino effect slashing pension funds for up to 10 million people in 1,400 multiemployer plans across the U.S.

 

At least 200 of those funds are “in the red,” Brockway said.

 

Anderson said groups have discussed alternatives to slashing pensions, the most notable of which is a bipartisan plan being worked out between groups and Ohio representatives like Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who is scheduled to speak at Thursday’s rally. Their plan, still in development, would set up a new insurance company to help back multiemployer pension funds in conjunction with Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), a government agency set up in 1974 along with ERISA.

 

Addressing how PBGC has been “woefully underfunded” would be perhaps the biggest step of all, Anderson said.

 

Protect Pensions leaders have estimated the Central States recovery plan would cost Wisconsin residents $2 billion.

 

“It’s not right,” Brockway said. “They’re picking on all us older guys, and they’re trying to divide us.”