The trustees for the Teamsters’ severely underfunded Central States Pension Plan say they will not submit a new rescue plan to the federal government.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury on May 6 denied the pension fund’s rescue proposal, which would have dramatically reduced pension payouts to tens of thousands of retired Teamsters around the nation. Treasury said the submitted plan did not meet several requirements under a federal law passed in late 2014.
“There is little point in dissecting a decision that has already been made and cannot be changed,” the trustees said in a news release. “Central States Pension Fund remains in critical and declining status, and is projected to run out of money in less than ten years. ... The fact that the federal government’s multiemployer pension insurance program, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is also running out of money means our participants may see their pension benefits ultimately reduced to virtually nothing when the Fund runs out of money.”
The trustees said critics of their proposal now need to “deliver on real solutions” to protect retirement benefits.
The Central States trustees said that “we will do everything in our power to support a legislative solution that protects the pension benefits of the more than 400,000 Central States participants and beneficiaries, who should not have to bear the emotional trauma of waiting until the fund is at the doorstep of insolvency before Congress acts.”