May 21, 2020

UPDATE: The HEROES Act has passed the House with the GROW Act still in it. We now need to focus our efforts on the US Senate! Please contact Senate Leadership, as well as our two US Senators from Washington State to tell them to #saynotoGROW!!!

May 14, 2020

Teamster members and retirees: we have the next 20 hours to flood the emails and phones of the House Leadership to get them to strip out GROW from the HEROES Act. Call and email Nancy Pelosi and all of our Washington State Congressmen and Congresswomen with a simple message: “Remove GROW from the HEROES Act”.

The Teamster position is spelled out below, as is contact information for all the politicians you should reach out to. 

GROW will have a huge negative impact on Teamster pensions if it becomes law. GROW doesn’t belong in the HEROES Act. It is a Republican bill and it should not be in the Dem’s HEROES Act. Mobilize now to kill GROW! Call, email TODAY – RIGHT NOW!

Nancy Pelosi: Email: pelosi.house.gov D.C. phone number: 202-225-4965

Phone number District Office: 415-556-4862

Here’s where you can contact all of the Congressmen and Congresswomen from Washington State:

You can also contact our two Senators:

The Devastating Facts of GROW

Twelve unions, representing the majority of private-sector union members, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, oppose the GROW Act. So why have the House Democrats included it in their latest coronavirus relief bill?

The GROW Act hurts workers, retirees, employers, and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation and should not become law.

The GROW Act is deeply flawed because it allows multiemployer plan trustees to “refinance” their obligations to workers and retirees in the existing pension plan over 25 years instead of 15 years, so they can divert money to create a new composite pension plan. This weakens the existing plan and leaves neither plan—the existing plan, nor the composite plan—with enough money to pay promised benefits.

The current public health and economic crisis illustrates the harm the GROW Act would inflict on Americans. If Congress had already passed the GROW Act and it was law now, workers in a previously healthy multiemployer pension plan that converted to a composite plan would face draconian benefit cuts. The benefits composite plan participants expected they would earn would be cut 70%, and the vested benefits they already earned would be cut 25%. At the same time, the vested benefits of workers in the existing plan would be cut 21%. To avoid benefit cuts, employers would be required to increase contributions by approximately 82%—above and beyond what they already committed.

Supporters of this terrible legislation claim that transitioning to a composite plan is voluntary. Composites plans are anything but voluntary. They undermine multiemployer defined-benefit pension plans by shifting risk from the plan sponsor (employer) to the worker, thereby creating an incentive for employers to flee defined-benefit plans. If GROW succeeds, it guarantees it will be an issue in every negotiation where unions currently have defined-benefit plans and result in a race to the bottom. The more than one million Teamsters who are essential workers risking their health to continue going to work amid the pandemic deserve to retire with dignity and financial security.

We urge Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats to listen to the majority of the labor movement that opposes GROW and strip it out of the HEROES Act before it is considered on the House floor.

Sincerely,

Rick Hicks, President JC 28

Randy Cammack, President, JC 42

Rick Middleton Vice President, IBT

Steve Vairma, IBT Vice President, President JC 3

Rome Aloise, IBT Vice President, President JC 7

Tony Andrews, President, JC 37

Ron Herrera, Vice President, IBT