Supporter, 

I wanted to make sure you saw Karen’s email from Friday. Late last week, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Marcy Kaptur introduced the Keep Our Pension Promises Act – a bill that could overturn potentially devastating cuts to the pensions of more than one million retirees.

Sign the petition supporting the Keep Our Pension Promises Act today!

Americans’ hard-earned retirement benefits are under attack. We can’t allow recent cuts to multiemployer pension plans to stand, setting a precedent for future cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Thank you,
Joellen Leavelle
Digital and Outreach Director, Pension Rights Center

From: Karen Friedman, Pension Rights Center
Date: Friday, June 19, 2015  9:33 AM
Subject: Stand with retirees to protect pension benefits

Supporter,

Late last year, behind closed doors, members of Congress negotiated a deal that could cut the pensions of more than one million retirees covered by certain financially-troubled multiemployer plans. Without hearings or public debate, Congress attached a bill to the must-pass omnibus spending bill, which allows the trustees of these underfunded multiemployer pension plans to cut retirees’ benefits by as much as 60 percent, or more.

This law, the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 or MPRA, overturns 40 years of established private pension law and breaks our country’s promise to current and future retirees. Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced legislation to overturn this outrageous law.

Stand with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Marcy Kaptur, other congressional co-sponsors, and the Pension Rights Center to show your support for the Keep Our Pension Promises Act today!

The Keep Our Pension Promises Act of 2015 comes just as the Treasury Department and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation have issued proposed regulations that provide guidance on how the trustees of certain troubled multiemployer plans can move ahead with potentially devastating cuts. Once the regulations are final, pension plans will be allowed to apply to cut benefits.

We must stop these benefit cuts and demand that Congress overturn MPRA, which undermines the most fundamental and sacrosanct principles of the federal private pension law, ERISA. If cuts are allowed in these multiemployer plans, it will create a dangerous precedent that could lead to cuts in corporate and state pension plans, and even in Social Security.

Click here to show your support for the Keep Our Pension Promises Act and demand that Congress protect the hard earned pensions of current and future retirees.

The Pension Rights Center has been at the forefront of this fight to protect multiemployer pensions. In December, we delivered over 60,000 letters to members of Congress opposing cuts to retirees’ pensions and earlier this year we delivered 1,500 comments to the Treasury Department.

And now, we have the bill that we need to overturn this disastrous law!

Please, stand with millions of workers and retirees to demand that Congress overturn this law that would allow deep cuts to retirees’ benefits.

 
Thank you,
Karen Friedman
Executive Vice President, Pension Rights Center