PBGC: Teamsters' Pension Has Repaid $126.5 Million Spent For Dead People
Only after Congressional pressure were the taxpayer funds returned.
By Peter List, Editor | April 8, 2024
An infamous Teamsters pension fund that received more than $36 billion in “special financial assistance” (taxpayer funds) last year has repaid the government $126.5 million it wrongly received on behalf of already-dead union members, according to a Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) press release on Monday evening.
“PBGC is committed to effective stewardship of taxpayer funds. On April 8, 2024, the Central States Pension Plan (Central States) returned to the U.S. Government more than $126.5 million—the portion of the SFA amount paid to the plan based on inaccurate participant census data,” the PBGC stated.
Known for years as the “mob’s piggy bank,” due to many unionized trucking companies going out of business, as well as UPS withdrawing from the failing plan in the late 2000s, the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Plan was facing insolvency in 2025.
“The key turning point came in late 2007 when James Hoffa and Ken Hall gave UPS management their long-sought concession: pulling out 44,000 full-time Teamsters—and said good-bye to the $800 million (and growing) that UPS would be contributing annually,” the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) wrote in 2012.
“Already its annual benefits payments are $2.1 billion more than it’s taking in,” Rollcall noted in 2020. “And the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Plan is committed to paying $40 billion more in benefits to 364,000 members than its dwindling assets can support.”
However, through the $1.5 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Biden signed into law in 2021, over 200 underfunded pension plans like the Teamsters’ Central Staes received a total $90 billion union pension bailout.
Following the Central States pension receiving the $36 billion bailout in 2022, it came to light this past November, following an investigation by the PBGC’s Office of Inspector General, that the PBGC had overpaid the struggling Teamsters' plan by $127 million, wrongly including dead retirees.
The erroneous payments came under Congressional scrutiny and, last month, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, subpoenaed the PBGC after being seemingly stonewalled by the PBGC during the Committee’s investigation.
“Accordingly, the Committee wrote to PBGC twice seeking information about overpayments to multiemployer pension programs and about PBGC’s efforts to recoup these overpayments on behalf of taxpayers,” Rep. Foxx stated in her cover letter to the PBGC. “At PBGC’s request, the Committee provided two extensions to permit PBGC more time to produce responsive materials.”
“Unfortunately,” Foxx wrote, “PBGC’s responses have left significant gaps. What is more, the responses show a complete and total lack of respect for hardworking taxpayers’ dollars.”
Now that the Central States plan has repaid the PBGC, it is unclear whether the matter is resolved. However, the PBGC claims to be conducting a further audit of other pension plans that had received taxpayer moneys.
“With respect to other plans that received SFA before PBGC expanded the scope of its independent death audit,” the PBGC stated in its release. “PBGC has full census data audits underway. PBGC is committed to facilitating the return of SFA amounts made to those plans based on inaccurate census data.”
Go here for more on the PBGC’s disbursement of taxpayer funds to union pension plans.
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