Originally published at Forbes.com on December 3, 2018. Yes, these plans have now been bailed out so this isn’t as “newsworthy” but mismanagement and poor government regulation is still a “tale as old as time.”
First, a brief item of news: the Joint Committee which was to have reported on its recommendations with respect to the troubles of multi-employer pensions, has instead reported that they will miss the deadline, but are continuing to work on solutions. No one is surprised by this announcement, as there is no solution to this crisis that won’t cause a lot of pain — the only question is how that pain is to be shared among employers, workers, retirees, and the federal government.
While we continue to wait for the outcome of their deliberations, here’s a follow-up to last week’s article on the topic. Readers will recall that I compared Dutch legislation, with its strict demands that plans be overfunded, to American plans which, until comparatively recently were effectively prevented from building up funding reserves to be prepared for future losses.
There is one plan, however, whose pension plan underfunding woes dwarf all others, and whose story needs to be told separately, and that’s the Central States Teamsters Plan. This plan has 400,000 participants, and is funded at either a 38% level (“accrued liability”, with a higher interest rate) or 28% (“current liability” – a lower rate), according to their most recent plan filings, with a total liability of $41 billion or $56 billion, depending on the interest rate, and assets of only about $15 billion. The plan is expected to be insolvent in 2025 if no actions are taken to remedy the situation. No other plan comes close to this level of shortfall, at least in terms of the absolute level of underfunding.
So how did this plan get into so much trouble?
Unlike other plans, the Teamsters plan did not find itself in a position of being overfunded, promising greater benefits as a result, then struggling in the face of market downturns.
Instead, in the short term, there are two villains.
As chronicled by Jasmine Ye Han at Bloomberg back in August, Central States (or the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, to cite its full name), one cause was the deregulation of the trucking industry:
When Congress passed a law in 1980 that led to the deregulation of the trucking industry, it caused tens of thousands of trucking companies to go out of business. By 2003, Central States lost 70 percent of the employers that contributed in 1980.
“If you look at the top 50 employers in 1980, now only three of them still exist (in the plan),” Tom Nyhan, executive director of the Central States fund, told Bloomberg Law.
This hit Central States particularly hard, as Ye Han notes, because its plan was limited to the trucking industry. In contrast, the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Plan, though likewise a Teamsters plan, was structured differently.
Trucking deregulation didn’t hit the Western Conference the same way because it had a more diverse employer base, said Chuck Mack, the plan’s co-chair.
“We have been structured as a plan that would open to any employer who wants to come in. As a result we have food processing workers, public employees, bus drivers, etc.,” he said. “If employers can only contribute 50 cents an hour (per worker) not $5, they can do that. That makes a difference in employers accepting the plan.”
The Western Conference plan’s largest contributing employers include United Parcel Service Inc., Costco Wholesale Group, Albertsons Cos Inc., and Allied Waste.
The second big hit that Central States took was that UPS exited the plan in 2007. This means that they ceased making pension contributions for UPS employees who were Teamster members, and began providing for their pensions by themselves. Whenever a participating company leaves a multi-employer pension plan, it must pay into the fund what’s called “withdrawal liability” as a means of compensating for underfunding in the plan. However, UPS withdrew in 2007, with a hurried contract ratification with the Teamsters enabling them to avoid changes to multi-employer plans coming into effect in 2008. Because the withdrawal liability payment required under legislation at the time did not fully compensate the plan for the losses it would experience, this and other withdrawals brought about further decreases in pension funding.
But here’s what’s important to understand:
In principle, neither of these factors should have caused the problems that they did. Had the plan been well-run and properly funded, and had principles of multi-employer plan design and the relevant legislation been designed to ensure long-term solvency rather than relying on new generations of contributors to make up for losses, Central States would have weathered these storms.
But Central States was missing all this. Like all plans, they were stymied by legislation designed for ongoing plans. They had flaws in their plan design. And they were neither well-run nor properly funded.
To begin with, in my prior article, I wrote that during boom years, plans were unable to overfund their pension plans due to a tax code that imposed excise taxes on plans which continued to contribute despite overfunding. But Central States was never able to over-fund and has never been more than 75% funded even at its peak, with its periods of relatively-better funding in the late 90s/early 2000s and in 2008. In 1982, when control over its assets was moved to a government-mandated asset manager, the plan was less than 40% funded, about the same as it is today (when using the same method). Those professional money managers have been accused of mismanaging the assets under their control, for instance, in 2016 at MarketWatch, in a column by Elliot Blair Smith:
Unable to reverse a decades-long outflow of benefits payments over pension contributions, the professional money managers placed big bets on stocks and non-traditional investments between 2005 and 2008, with catastrophic consequences.
However, the GAO analyzed the investment returns and expenses of the fund during that period to respond to those accusations in a June 2018 report. Its conclusion:
GAO found that CSPF’s investment returns and expenses were generally in line with similarly sized institutional investors and with demographically similar multiemployer pension plans.
And why was the plan not permitted to manage its own money? The “original sin” of the Central States plan was corruption and organized crime. Here’s Carl F. Horowitz writing at Capital Research Center:
The Central States Pension Fund still bears the scars from those Mob days, even though the link between the two worlds formally ended long ago. In 1982, following a federal investigation, the Teamsters entered into a consent decree with the Justice Department to cede control of its retirement funds to a consortium of banks. The arrangement remains in force. Unfortunately, it has not been sufficient to stave off another looming disaster.
Horowitz provides details on the Mafia corruption in the days when the Teamsters were run by Jimmy Hoffa and the Central States plan by Allen Dorfman, and references a report by Jonathan Kwitny of the Wall Street Journal on July 22, 1975, which, along with follow-up articles on the 23rd and 24th, make for fascinating reading. In 1972, the plan’s assets were nearly completely (89%) invested in real estate loans — and not just office buildings or apartment buildings but cemeteries, motels, bowling alleys, and the like, and a good third of them were delinquent (the WSJ is careful to report the assets as “declared assets”). But these weren’t just any loans. As detailed on July 23, there were loans made to known figures of the Detroit and Chicago Mafia such as Michael Santo (Big Mike) Polizzi, Louis (Lou the Tailor) Rosanova, and Andrew Lococo. The fund invested $116.7 million into a 16,000 land development project in California, which failed, and $200 million ($1.2 billion, adjusted for inflation) in Nevada casinos, where convicted criminals were involved as brokers, developers, or in other ways. And as detailed on July 24, the federal government pursued convictions against Dorfman and a host of other figures for conspiracy to defraud the Central States plan in connection with a particular series of loans. There were a series of twists and turns, and limits in evidence the government was able to present, but in the end, the men were acquitted because, in part, according to interviews with the jurors, the pension fund, as represented by its trustees, didn’t consider itself to have been victimized, with one juror’s quote wrapping up the series:
For fraud to exist, the person being defrauded must be somewhat naïve. These pension board members weren’t that naïve.
What’s more, at the time, the plan was still taking in far more in contributions than it was paying out in benefits, $283.2 million vs. $175.2 million — but one way in which it managed to do so, in addition to simply being a young plan at the time, was by putting roadblocks in front of workers trying to collect their pensions. The WSJ didn’t have hard statistics, only reports and records from lawsuits, but cited instances in which workers were required to prove (via pay stubs or other records) not only that they were dues-paying members of eligible unions with participating employers, but also that their employer made the contributions they were supposed to have made.
Finally, to return to Ye Han’s analysis, the Western Conference Teamsters plan had a provision that allowed its trustees to adjust its pension accruals as needed based on pension funding levels. Central States had no such provision. In fact, its pension accrual formula is in itself enough to give actuaries nightmares, though it’s not unusual for a multi-employer plan: for the bulk of its employees, from the 1980s to 2003, a participant accrued benefits at the rate of 2% of the employer contributions on his behalf. Since in the real world, the amount of benefit a pension plan can provide for its participants depends on asset returns, mortality levels, termination rates, and other variable assumptions, a fixed provision such as this is a recipe for disaster. (In the following years, the union and participating employers negotiated both a change in formula and supplemental contributions.)
So could Central States have managed to stay solvent, even financially healthy, had it not been beset by corruption and by a faulty benefit formula? The plan — as with all such plans, because of the laws governing these plans — still lacked a crucial element that’s the norm in the Dutch equivalent to multi-employer plans, the ability to adjust benefits as needed as soon as it becomes clear that the existing benefit formulas are unsustainable, rather than waiting until the plan’s solvency is at stake or hoping that funding deficits can be made up for with favorable investment returns or larger contributions from the next generation.
And all of this is not to say that we can simply pin the blame for the plan’s problems on the workers or retirees who expect benefits from the plan, or from their employers, to the extent they still exist, or on Jimmy Hoffa and Allen Dorfman, and walk away from it. The solutions to the multiemployer crisis can’t simply be found by assigning blame.
But irrespective of the solutions to this crisis, it’s important to understand what happened to this plan in order to address the question of whether multiemployer plans are inevitably destined to fail or whether, had they been better designed, had the relevant legislation from Taft-Hartley to ERISA and beyond been more effective at ensuring their long-term sustainability, and had, in this case, the government been better able to put a stop to corruption, they might still serve a useful role in providing for workers’ retirement benefits. And this I still believe to be true — or, at least, I’m not ruling it out.
December 2024 Author’s note: the terms of my affiliation with Forbes enable me to republish materials on other sites, so I am updating my personal website by duplicating a selected portion of my Forbes writing here.
I have been a member of the Central States Pension Plan since 1977. One area you did not touch on was the influence of the Teamsters on the pension plan. In the 90’s when Hoffa (the son) started to have competition for the Presidency of the Teamsters, the pension plan was used as a tool to keep himself on top. Good example: Our pension benefits exploded in the 90’s. I remember fellow employees getting ready to retire with a 30&Out pension. When a new contract came up, the pension benefit would increase by $500 per month. To get the new amount you only had to work 10 days into the new contract! That was an increase of $6000 per year with only 10 days worth of contributions to cover it. That was only one thing that went on. I could go on and on about other things that were taking place.
Know one ever mentions about the Treasury Dept. Forcing the hand to offer early outs to rid the fund of excess supposedly it had.More took the early outs.Then as as member we took 1% down from 2% to fix the sheer number who went ahead and left on early retirement-2003 I believe.Where was the oversight.You only have to follow the dark money politically through history and currently who are pursuing solely with their billions to further disect the working men and women of America.The United States government was in fear of the Union when it’s numbers amassed over 60% of the work force and realized the Union as a sole entity could shut this country down.This made the rich and political poweful shudder that the power of people could bring down there livelyhood.Thus the pack has been pursuing to kill or be killed mentality that exist.I could go on forever.There were several players with there hand in the pot.It is and always will be criminal what has happened due to certain people,laws,goverments,unions.If it was Enron-ohhh thats criminal!If it was an ordinary individual thete would be jail time and restitution.Every crook involved I’m sure has their retirement still secure.That’s all we as teamsters ever asked was to make good decisions on our behalf-several need to be prosecuted just ones opinion who will have nothing for 30 yrs. of service because we trusted those who had the authority and failed.Hard to swallow this one.
Yikes! I’d be happy to hear more! In fact, if you’d like to, please use the “contact” page to send me your comments, and I can add them to a follow-up article. Thank you!
Understanding is one thing but a solution is what is needed. The Butch Lewis Act Bill would not only solve Central States problem but civil pension’s too. This bill is not a bailout but a loan that will be paid back.
Oh, honey this goes far beyond actuarial assumptions! Remember that Central States was under a Federal Consent Decree, and was not just to have one, nor two, but 3 layers of protection. That’s what makes this even more beyond incredulous.
What this seems to be, is a bunch of players who, made assumptions, (obviously the wrong ones), and those who were to be overseeing this stuff, just didn’t have any financial sense to say wait a minute, this isn’t working? You file complaints to the DOL for fiduciary breaches and the DOL turns it’s head. The participants ask for archived 5500 forms, and the DOL sends garbage to the participants, because archived files are corrupted. You can’t make up how really messed up this all is. When you pay actuaries such as yourselves to do what they do in these funds, and believe me, Segal has made a small fortune from Central States. Is Segal saying what the Fund managers want to hear, or are they really doing what they were to do, and stay impartial. This is the stuff I wonder about.
If a actuary sees first class travel, trips to Hawaii, isn’t it their responsibility to report these things, when if any of them could do the math, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see this fund is headed to zero. So numbers don’t matter, and just being paid to crunch them is the only job left, because let’s face it honey, this isn’t the only one going sour, and you actuaries when pensions worked for decades, aren’t calling out the volatile stock market, the investment strategy, or the fact that Central States invested into third world Countries? You don’t find any of this odd? The fund manager who instead of taking care of his fund, just runs to Congress to change laws to override the minimum standards of ERISA Law, instead of just enforcing the laws. And a fiduciary no matter what compacity is supposed to meet the highest standards, not just the minimum standards on the books. This subject is not just about the math, but a much bigger picture than just actuarial assumptions. You guys need to go beyond number crunching and call this stuff out as you see it, as you are the closest thing the participants have to knowing right and wrong, because obviously, the under educated trustees, certainly don’t.
I could not agree more. The pension actuaries, as a whole, are far too quiet. This lack of standards is part of why the SOA failed to compel the CAS to merge the organisations. . Frankly I do not understand why the SOA does not raise the bar in terms of expected conduct An Actuary should go beyond the umber crunching, they should have to sign off that they agree with the assumptions and not just wimp out with a foot not that says the plan’s assumption weer not met in x amount of past years and may not be met in the future. There should be loud graphics that illustrate what the results could be if the various assumptions are not met
Moreover a frank discussion needs to take place about the theoretical soundness of defined benefit plans. I have yet to see an honest discussion. I think I know why,and it boils down to there are no sound plans because the assumed underpinnings are molded on a past that does not resemble the present not likely the future. . .
I am sad, because the Actuary profession should be more. My offspring are in the profession, but on the CAS side. Personally I am a disappointed in how low the standards are from both sanctioning organizations.
Jeez, I apologize for the typos. I must have posted the draft.
The actuarial assumptions are very easy to track. When you have a fund like Central States that is about 40% funded, it doesn’t take a financial genius to recognize that no tweaking of assumptions will insure that the beneficiaries get what they were promised.
I was a young investment analyst in the 1980’s…..I saw the problems back then…..a few dozen firms going bankrupt every month….funding ratios that were NOWHERE near 90% let alone 100%….if I knew the reality, how could Central States, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and the DOL not know ?
Simple: they all relied on HOPE that interest rates would remain high and bail out the liability side and stock returns would bail out the asset side.
Meanwhile, contributions continued to drop or be “waived” and there is no subsitute for contributions.
This fund should have been fully-funded since the 1990’s. End of story.
I believe this was one of the solutions (check the co-sponsors) to the pension issue we’re faced with, it had bipartisan support and was set to be brought to the floor but for push-back by a radio talking head and Grover Norquist the R’s that supported this pulled their support. https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/senate-bill/3157
Jane here,
1991 Employee retirement benefit increased
The “30 and Out” benefit is increased to $2,000 per month at any age with a maximum benefit of $2,500 per month at age 65.
1993 UPS employee benefit introduced
A new pension class is established for UPS participants only. In addition to the “30 and Out” benefit of $2,000 per month, a “25 and Out” benefit becomes available at any age in the amount of $1,500 per month. Investment policy statement revised Morgan Stanley revises its investment policy statement. 1994 National master freight benefit introduced A new pension class is established for National Master Freight participants. The “30 and Out” pension is increased to $2,500 per month. Later that year, the same benefit becomes available to Car Haul participants. 1998 Consent decree amendment The amendment provides for the appointment of a second named fiduciary. National Master Freight benefit increased A new pension class is established for National Master Freight participants. The “30 and Out” benefit is increased to $3,000 per month. The eligibility age for the Car Haul benefit for “25 and Out” is reduced from age 57 to age 55. All this was done after the Federal Consent decree was put in place.
I even found one of the old Central States Propaganda magazines, saying the Trustees were doing it to try and help build numbers in the Union.
So much for taking your Union hat off and replacing it with protecting the fund hat. The sad thing that people do not realize is that the participants had no say in any of this. This was approved by the powers that be. Had these pensions been kept stable, the retirees would not know the difference, now. The problem is as things like buying a home, which some of the retirees did, based upon what they could afford, and most not being aware of the financial strain to their pensions, because the funds were not disclosing it, cutting these people’s pensions when they may have already invested them, is beyond dumb.
The letters even Ken Feinberg said were not understandable to the Participants. The first time something understandable was put on them, was the after MPRA passed, when the fund finally put an expiration date, on the fund. Before that the letters said the trustees were working on a rehabilitation program, and that the fund went from 46% funded to 43% funded. Well if we average people did that math, at 3 % a year, our assumption would be that the fund would be done in 15 years, and being 76, most people would be under the assumption that the fund would be insolvent after they die, since it is decreasing 3 % a year.
What was even worse, that you don’t know is that the Central States minions were going to the Local’s telling these people that everything was going to be okay, and not to worry.
Disclosure of information by many people is a huge problem here. And the participants were broadsided totally. And remember what I said about 1st class travel and trips to Hawaii here, because, that has been going on with this fund too. There is way to much wrong here, and my question is, are you out just to ignore those things too, and dish up dirt so that these people get screwed in the end by the media and people such as you, or are you really interested in doing a story that tells the whole truth, because somehow, it is being ignored.
Jane,
Mary is absolutely correct if you really want to involve yourself and do some real reporting. This would be the place to do that. The issue here is a humanitarian issue. You will be looking at thousands of participants of CSPF, and all the participants of the UMWA pensioners, as well as the locals that have their own pension issues along with the Iron Workers ETC. There will be more than 10,000,000 people, real people, directly affected by this crisis. The whole country will be hit by this and hit hard. If you think GM closing five more plants is big, that is nothing compared to what the pension crisis will look like.
I believe billions of our pension dollars were loaned to GM, with this becoming a forgiven loan or better yet called a bailout. We, as participants of these funds, didn’t have any real control of our funds; we just continued to do what we believed was the right thing, to set money aside for our future.
Our fund managers and/or fiduciaries of these funds have had the control. By order of the consent decree, our government placed the fiduciary responsibility in the hands of a few financial (too big to fail) institutions that gambled with our earned retirement dollars, as well as leaving it in partial control of the individuals that have helped facilitated the problem. With the help of the NCCMP they worked tirelessly to pass a law (MPRA), that didn’t see the light of day until after it was inked, to protect themselves from the law.
Included in MPRA was a very undemocratic procedure of voting for or against benefit cuts. Wrapped in this undemocratic process was that if we didn’t return our ballot we were counted as a yes vote to cut our very own benefit. The scheming individuals that put together the MPRA law were well aware that the retirees that would be asked to vote on this issue were basically, for a large part, computer illiterate and would not be aware of the complete story. And for the most part people are still not getting the message.
If you are serious about doing a story on this there are some well-versed people on this issue that you could and should reach out to to get the whole truth.
There are no loans to GM and Wall Street is not responsible for the Central States pension underfunding.
I believed the mistaken alleged bailouts of alleged undercapitalized usa instistutions c.2007-2008 especially malfeasanced sec manipulated “real” estate schemers were duped believing solid conservative values suddenly need bailedout (?): ACTUALLY entailed deeper DARKER plans beyond scamming “governors” hailing a president for “saving” us with “bailouts” during a believed national healthcare multi trillion dollare lie and short sell of mega proprtion unbelievably. Now recovered AGAIN earning more and more creatining more and more pf durable items that keep ignoramuses rolling…
Very interesting read but you have to read not only the Forbe’s article but the reply posts to get a realistic idea of what happened. The blame is rampant especially with the government structure that was proposed to help catch any wrongdoing. GAO officials that dues paying members had to pay the salaries of while “overseeing” the fund that was under government decree.
I’d like to add one such reply my reading on this beforehand subject stated these GAO officials & CSPF trustees in turning the funds over to several-well known banking institutions did a poor job of overseeing how those banks handled the spending allocations. The allocations where way to volitile for a pension fund this size it was said 70 percent specutive stocks 30 percent in secure investments. They did not inquire as to how those banks would allocate the investments. As you know any secure investment should have been more of a 30/70 spilt for a fund that size. What did we gain by having the GAO oversight here? There is no accountability very few hearings on the scope of the problem. What will the cause and effect be? I’d wish I could say a chance to fix all the causes that created this. The effects will be gut wrenching for all in this fund.
So my thanks to you for allowing me to voice my concerns on this important matter and I do hope that those in Washington come to realize this problem needs to be dealt with sooner then later.
Sincerely.
yes, I’d like to comment. My latest intentional maneuver to protect my future retirement is to change employment. Notice has been given to my employer after more than 24 years. I am going to drive for UPS because they are growing and need CDL positions filled. My reflections on the CSPF is that the executives there are responsible for allowing this disaster to continue, compound and multiply. That board of multiple directors enjoy exorbitantly high six figure salaries and yearly meetings at resort properties while watching the pieces crumble around us members. Ya, they are members too but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t need the pension benefits because you’re salary is so high. Their …” fiduciary ” obligation is not a priority or primary concern. I really don’t know how they can sleep or even show their faces. Tens and Hundreds of thousands of elderly workers depend on that money each month and they want to call on Congress? It’s just a ploy to get em a few more years of paychecks… # lockemUP – No confidence…. it’s been a decade already! make the hard choices and cut by percentage groups in categories- not a easy thing but better than insolvency in 2025.
The withdrawal penalty on small employers is akin to modern day slavery, as long as you keep working we won’t make you pay the ever escalating millions we say you owe even though you never missed a payment for your employees and had nothing to do with the funds mismanagement. So keep working till you die
Why am l not offerd a buyout?
Thank you as I search the truth where funds went intended for honest hard working people my brothers and sisters.
I believe I now need to learn whom within 2018 GAO stated adequate funds? I know a “false news” expert from this era. I want to know how my UAW VEBA TRUST for retirees was said to have lost 1% of funds c.2019 when a donkey could’ve made 10%? My UAW slavery gets me $54 per month per year of service pednsion? AFTER TAXES! THE TAXES I’M PAYING TO BAILOUT FAILURES and now you say jimmy junior is in on it? Who else? I need to know. We all pay eternally you know. Come clean.