Kamala Harris Saved Teamsters Pensions, Gets No Endorsement

Sunday, October 06, 2024

In 2021, Democrats attached an expensive pension bailout to the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package they muscled through the Senate on a party-line vote ... The inclusion of an estimated $74 to $91 billion to shore up troubled multiemployer pension funds was a small legislative miracle for the Teamsters and other unions - and it never would have happened without Harris. She cast the deciding vote in a crucial step known as the motion to proceed, allowing the stimulus package to advance with zero Republican support.

Posted by tonyroma at 04:33 PM | 12 COMMENTS | permalink

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Many O'Brien critics are angry that the union could look past the pension rescue, to say nothing of Trump's hostility to unions during his first term. The Teamsters' Central States pension fund was the biggest plan facing insolvency, with thousands of Teamsters facing benefit cuts so steep it would threaten their retirements.

"The Biden-Harris administration carried out their promise to solve the Teamsters' pension problems," Jim Hoffa, the union's former longtime president who preceded O'Brien, said in an interview. "That alone should be enough to cement a commitment from the IBT."

Local Teamsters councils covering a majority of the union's members across the U.S. have since come out for Harris, often citing the pension issue, among others.

O'Brien himself is a trustee of the New England Teamsters Pension Plan. That plan was on track to run out of funding by 2028, but now it will receive $5.7 billion in federal money due to Democrats' stimulus package, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the government-run entity that insures defined-benefit pensions. Without that funding, the plan's 72,000 recipients could have seen their benefit payments slashed by roughly 75%.

John Palmer, a member of the Teamsters' executive board, who plans to challenge O'Brien for the union's presidency in 2026, said he was one of three executive board members who voted to endorse Harris, while 14 voted to endorse no one. (Trump received no votes, he said.) O'Brien made the case that backing Harris would defy members' wishes, Palmer said, and he believes O'Brien's position influenced the thinking of other board members.

Palmer argued the non-endorsement would prove to be "very costly."

"We're not here to reflect members' polling," he said. "We're here to make sure facts are put forward to members so they can make an educated choice."

Biting the hand that feeds you and feeding the hand that slaps you in the face. Way to go Teamsters. I'm sure reinstalled President Trump and the anti-union GOP won't seek to pullback funding for your pensions. No way, right?

#1 | Posted by tonyroma at 2024-10-06 11:51 AM