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Thursday, August 22, 2019

Bernie’s labor plan includes restoring pension rights undone by Obama/Biden in 2014. – Fred Klonsky

Bernie’s labor plan includes restoring pension rights undone by Obama/Biden in 2014. – Fred

BERNIE’S LABOR PLAN INCLUDES RESTORING PENSION RIGHTS UNDONE BY OBAMA/BIDEN IN 2014.

Campaigning in Iowa, Bernie Sanders released a comprehensive labor plan today as he and other Democratic presidential candidates addressed the Iowa Federation of Labor’s annual convention in Altoona.
Included in Sanders’ plan is a repeal of an Obama executive order, signed in 2014, allowing for major pension theft across private sector industries.
The 2014 bill, endorsed and signed by President Obama led to what was the first cuts in earned pension benefits to current retirees in over 40 years.
Writing in the Intercept in 2016, David Dayen:
The pension changes in the CRomnibus enable trustees of multi-employer plans — union-negotiated pension benefit funds that cover employees across entire industries like trucking or construction — to apply to the Treasury Department to cut benefits for current retirees in order to stretch the fund’s resources. This changed the ban on cutting such benefits written into the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974, which governs private-sector pension plans.
There were no public hearings on this change to pension law, CONTINUE READING: Bernie’s labor plan includes restoring pension rights undone by Obama/Biden in 2014. – Fred