Retired Teamsters fight for their pensions

Ron and Shirley Schlueter stand to lose almost 90 percent of their retirement income next year.

The Demossville, Kentucky, couple were informed by the Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund in September that 63-year-old retired trucker Ron Schlueter's pension benefits would be cut from $2,552 per month to $1,271.

After health-care costs and additional fees are accounted for, the Schlueters would have about $300 to live on. That's before taxes.

"How can we survive on that amount? We would have to sell our home and live on welfare," Shirley Schleuter said. "We're not asking for pity – we just want what we were promised and paid hard-earned money for."

The Schlueters are a few of the 410,000 retired Teamsters – 48,000 of whom are Ohioans – facing drastic cuts to their pension benefits.

The Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund called for the cuts when Congress passed the Multi-employer Pension Reform Act of 2014, signed into law by President Barack Obama last year.

The law gives the Central States Pension administrators the ability to cut union retirees' benefits by at least 30 percent. Recently retired union members face some of the deepest cuts.

Pension regulators, namely the executive director of the fund, Thomas Nyhan, say the cuts are necessary. Central States is now paying out $3.46 in benefits for every $1 it takes in — paying $2 billion a year more than it receives.

The fund is currently $17.5 billion short of its debts, regulators say.

Nyhan said the only way to avoid the fund's collapse in the next few years is reducing payouts to make the money last longer.

"The impact of the law is going to be devastating to many people in Ohio, and the desperation people are feeling with having their income cut in half is going to be overwhelming for the rest of their lives," said Ken Paff, head of the Detroit-based Teamsters for a Democratic Union. Paff’s organization is dedicated to holding union officials accountable to their members.

In Ron Schlueter's case, he worked more than 30 years as a truck driver for the Teamsters. In that time, he suffered from multiple strokes, a heart attack, and developed peripheral neuropathy -- a weakness in one's extremities -- as a result of cross-country driving.

"To suggest I go back to work is ludicrous," Ron Schlueter wrote in a note the Teamsters are using to promote his plight.

Several area retired Teamsters have traveled to, and are continuing to visit Washington D.C., to speak directly to members of Congress and representatives of the Treasury Department about preventing the fund cuts. One is Butch Lewis, who is the former head of Local 100 on Oak Road in Evendale.

"It's heartbreaking to hear how these cuts will affect so many families," Lewis said in a presentation to the Treasury Department in September.

Lewis was also at a demonstration on Fountain Square earlier this week, where a group of more than 100 Teamsters, both active and retired, made their demands, and desperation for action, loud and clear. Some held signs of coffins, labeled, "You're killing us," or "Keep our pension promises."

Truckers who passed by honked in solidarity.

Roy Stapleton, a trucker whose family has 125 combined years of service to the Teamsters, expected to retire in the next few years. He said he will put that plan on hold knowing that his pension will be cut.

"The government bailed out banks and crooks, they could just protect us from these cuts. At this rate, I'll never be able to retire." Stapleton said.

One possible saving grace may be Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman's proposed Pension Accountability Act introduced in October, which could avert the pension cuts.

The measure "aims to give workers and retirees a voice when a looming multi-employer pension bankruptcy requires major pension reforms."

If passed by Congress, the bill could force the plan trustees to negotiate with retirees.

This weekend, Bill Lichtenwald, president of the Ohio Conference of Teamsters and a trustee of the Central States Pension Fund, will visit the Teamster headquarters in Evendale to speak directly to current and retired union members. Individuals will come from as far as Michigan.

The event is at 10 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 5, at 2100 Oak Road.

"I think a lot of people will be interested in what he has to say," Shirley Schlueter said.