When banks reach the stage where they can sense a collateral collapse, Congress usually gets them out of their predicament. On the other hand, if the union pension funds approach death, Congress alters the law to let them hurt the retirees. What?
Federal government and the pension heist:
Nothing you knew? Well it’s not just you. Around 410 thousand teamsters who were mainly ex-federal government truck drivers who were told in October whether or not their pension will receive cuts or not. It’s tragic that around 65 percent of all these ex-employees got the red signal. The CSP fund has claimed that it will be making some serious reductions to the amount that goes on the pay checks of these employees by a staggering amount that is close to 23%. Some Union members and activists are claiming that this figure is not authentic and the rates can go as high as 60 percent.
What does this decision entail? More troubles for people who have served the federal government all their lives and received depleted compensations in the hope that they will be getting pensions when they retire. Bills will remain unpaid, collaterals will be lost and what’s the worst part? It’s not their fault and the government is getting greedy.
Another interesting fact in this regard is that it was completely illegal for the government to even think about making pension cuts. It stayed that way until around December 2014 when Congress made some alterations and some exceptions were added. There was no debate in this regard. This law was passed and allowed all the pension plans that are constituted by multiple employers to send their applications to the Treasury department in the hope of reducing benefits. Guess what, that is exactly what the Central states decided to do and their requests got approved.
While the dynamics of this matter still remain unknown and could be diverse, it can but only mean harm to the majority of the truck drivers that already find it hard to make ends meet.
