Teamsters Pension Fund Must Repay $2 Million, 7th Cir. Orders

A Teamsters pension fund must return about $2 million in withdrawal liability it collected from a trucking company that made fund contributions that weren’t required by its written bargaining agreement, the Seventh Circuit ruled.

The terms governing pension contributions to multiemployer funds can’t be changed by oral agreements between employers and unions, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said in a March 22 opinion. The precise terms “must be in writing—and, having been reduced to writing, must be enforced without any consideration of equitable arguments,” the court said.

The dispute arose in 2004, when Bulk Transport ...