Retirees, Workers Use Rally to Sound Off on Underfunded Pensions

Michigan lawmakers and hundreds of businesses, workers, and retirees urged Congress to fix the multiemployer pension funding crisis during a July 20 union meeting in Detroit.

The listening session was the latest in a series of Teamsters-sponsored, nationwide town halls and rallies on a pension system overhaul. It followed a rally in Ohio before a July 13 hearing of the bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans about ailing pensions and the growing funding deficits. Multiemployer plans are collectively bargained between unions and employers in the same industry, such as trucking or construction.

Many retirees and current ...