Reply #6: the WSJ article is subscrip only [View All]

[rusty charly]

He and Frank Rossi, the president of Local 404 of the IBT in Springfield, opposed the amendment in the 907-page bill because they said that it allowed the possibility of forcing veteran workers to have to choose between a cut in their retirement benefit or working years beyond what they had planned. Karen Ferguson, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Pension Rights Center, said that the "red zone" provision puts at risk the full retirement benefits for "older, longer-service rank-and-file workers." The bill in general and the red zone in particular were supported by other labor unions and the business industry.

Local Teamsters and their International Brotherhood opposed the "red zone" language in the bill. It would allow management and labor to open negotiated retirement benefits in cases where funding for the pension dips below 65 percent. But Roos and Ferguson countered that existing laws allow pension trustees to adjust benefits in financially unhealthy pensions.

"All of the key players in the Senate knew that these cuts are wrong, wrong, wrong, but in the end they must have concluded that they simply could not say no to an extraordinarily powerful business-labor juggernaut determined to allow companies to reduce their pension liabilities at the expense of long-time workers," said Ferguson yesterday. "Although the business-labor coalition claimed that these cuts are necessary to save underfunded multi-employer plans from collapse, they never were able to document this claim."

http://www.masslive.com/chicopeeholyoke/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-5/115476456429920.xml&coll=1

She added that the ultimate vote of 93-5 was "one more triumph of bad politics over good policy."