Posts tagged Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
Michigan Republican presses Chavez-DeRemer to rescind Biden-era labor regulations
March 20, 2025 // “I encourage DOL to enforce its laws while providing robust compliance assistance to workers and businesses instead of continuing the enforcement-only approach taken by the Biden-Harris administration,” Walberg said Wednesday to Chavez-DeRemer in a letter shared with The Hill.
Yellow Found Liable for $6.5 Billion in Pension Claims
September 20, 2024 // Earlier this month, Goldblatt ruled that Teamsters president Sean O'Brien could be deposed regarding the leadup to Yellow's bankruptcy, which could be a factor in whether the estate must pay up the class-action claims. According to Yellow, letters and conversations between O'Brien and former Yellow CEO Darren Hawkins show that the trucking company had a reasonable basis to believe it could prove that the company is not liable for the WARN Act claims. The Teamsters represented 22,000 of Yellow's roughly 30,000 employees when the company went under, with both parties blaming the other for the logistics firm's demise.
PBGC Just Announced Nearly $2.3 Billion Will Go To 4 Underfunded Union Pensions
June 22, 2024 // On Thursday, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced that it had approved the bailouts of four underfunded union pension plans totaling nearly $2.4 billion. Of the nearly $2.4 billion, the largest payments of taxpayer dollars will go to a grocery union pension and a printers’ union (which is now part of the Teamsters).
PBGC Announces nearly $650 Million In Taxpayer Monies To Go To Four More Failing Union Pension Plans
June 12, 2024 // On Tuesday, the PBGC announced it approved approximately $545.6 million in special financial assistance (SFA) to the CWA/ITU Negotiated Pension Plan (CWA/ITU Plan), based in Mount Laurel, New Jersey. The plan, which covers 24,288 participants in the printing industry, was projected to become insolvent and run out of money in 2029.
Central States Reaches Agreement to Repay $127M Overpayment
April 9, 2024 // Congressional Republicans, including Senator Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Representative Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, had subpoenaed the PBGC, PBGC Director Gordon Hartogensis and PBGC Inspector General Seema Nanda for documents related to the repayment. The subpoenas for Hartogensis and Nanda came after Hartogensis testified on March 20 to a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that Central States was then negotiating with the DOJ to secure the repayment.
House probe starts after $127M in bailout funds paid to dead Teamsters’ pension plan
January 16, 2024 // Foxx and Good also said the “mismanagement casts doubt on PBGC’s implementation of the larger program, the $91 billion Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program,” saying Central States had sent a follow-up letter to the inspector general’s office that implied it would use the money “as their personal slush fund” to help it “achieve its statutory objective of remaining solvent through 2051.” Inspector General Nicholas Novak previously told The Post that there was no clawback function available to PBGC as part of the American Rescue Plan, through which the Biden administration provided more than $80 billion to other multi-employer pension funds.
Feds: Carpenters union gets $183M of stimulus to restore cut pensions
August 18, 2023 // The retirement plan covering nearly 5,400 Southwest Ohio union carpenters got a nearly $183 million government bailout on Tuesday, according to an announcement by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The money comes from a program aimed at shoring up pension plans, created as part of the broader stimulus package enacted in 2021 in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The money will benefit members of the Southwest Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Plan, which in 2019, slashed pension benefits for thousands of members by an average of 18% to remain solvent. PBGC’s approval enables the plan to restore benefits previously suspended and to make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit suspensions, the federally chartered corporation said in a statement. The funding will enable the plan to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future.
PBGC Bailed Out Five More Union Pensions Last Week
January 30, 2023 // Last week, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced five more failing union pension plans will receive taxpayer moneys to ensure the pensions maintain the ability to pay plan participants. In total, the PBGC will dole out $277.6 million in “special finance assistance,” covering 2,274 pension plan recipients—which averages to nearly $125,000 per participant, with some receiving nearly up to $158,000 from the PBGC.
Biden mends bridges with unions after rail dispute
December 12, 2022 // President Joe Biden has returned to the good graces of labor unions by announcing a $36 billion pension fund bailout that will prevent more than 350,000 truck drivers, warehouse workers, construction staff, and retirees from forfeiting their benefits. But Biden's intervention comes after he rankled the key Democratic constituency by urging Congress to enforce a tentative union dispute agreement between railroad companies and their employees in order to avoid a strike that would have crippled the economy before the holidays.
Biden’s Abuse of Power Causes CBO to Raise Cost Estimate of Private Pension Bailouts by $4.5 Billion
October 18, 2022 // The Congressional Budget Office released a report on Sept. 30 that says President Joe Biden’s changes to the rules of a recent taxpayer bailout of select private union pension plans will add $4.5 billion in costs, bringing the taxpayers’ tab to $90.4 billion over the 2022-2032 period. And that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg. Ordinarily, $4.5 billion in additional spending as a result of administrative action would elicit scrutiny and challenges. After all, Congress—not the administration—has the powers of the purse, and the Biden administration’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has directly altered the law passed by Congress.