Posted on 10/30/2013 7:16:06 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Kadner: Union tells retirees to repay pension
Phil Kadner
October 30, 2013
Imagine a retired man going to his mailbox one morning and finding a letter informing him that a mistake has been made in his pension payments and he owes more than $100,000.
No joke. And it’s not some scam.
“I darn near had a heart attack,” recalled Ron Kosinski, 79, a former sheet metal worker who was notified that he owes $105,500.
His union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 73, miscalculated his pension payments when he retired 17 years ago.
In fact, dating to 1974, the union’s pension fund overpaid 589 retirees by about $5 million.
And now it’s trying to collect — not only the amount overpaid but 7 percent interest on that money.
“You’re talking about widows and elderly people,” Kelly said. “It’s blatantly unfair, and the pension fund doesn’t have to do this, although it’s claiming the IRS ordered them to collect the overpayments.”
These are not people who retired on pensions of $100,000 a year or more.
Ed Cochran, 63, who lived in Chicago’s Garfield Ridge community before retiring, was getting a pension check of $1,300 a month before he was notified that his payment had been miscalculated.
“So now the check is $1,057.50 a month, but they’re taking 25 percent of that to repay the fund for the money I was overpaid. So that leaves me with less than $800 a month,” Cochran said.
And Local 73 added insult to injury by including another message in Cochran’s overpayment notification.
“Because you’re 63 years old, the chances are you will not live another nine years and six months to complete the repayment schedule, they stated in the letter. So please send us a check for $66,721 as a lump sum payment,” Cochran said.
(Excerpt) Read more at southtownstar.suntimes.com ...
I could see the outcry if this was done against government employee pensioners.
Someday the feral government will send a similar notice about Social Security payments to anybody who doesn’t vote Democrat.
The incompetence, sleaze, and general awfulness of union management never ceases to amaze.
And yet the UAW is trying to spread their putrescence to auto manufacturing in the south.
Hey, UAW, the south has talent and morals. Keep your slimy Obamabutts outta there.
And the Federal employees who owe $5 billion in back tax payments to IRS just party on. Where is the effort to collect money from them?
Retirees are losing their health insurance packages, too. The package the unions agreed to no longer exist.
Retiree reply to union: I’ll repay all the pension money I owe as soon as you undo all the economic damage from the politicians you elected. Until then, I do not have the means to do so.
Ummm, doesn’t the State of Illinois have a statute of limitations on contract disputes?
I always like this scene from the movie ‘Armed and Dangerous’
“Hey what’s up with all the questions?”
“Shut up and sign the Fn form”
LOL
Even funnier is that the movie subtitles in this U-Tube are in Swedish.
Quote: “Are you crazy? Look at those guys; I bet any one of them could tell you where Jimmy Hoffa is buried!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILsze6UwF3o
Now Ed, Don’t you worry about that little “dying” note. By the time Your union is done with you, you’ll welcome it.
Teamsters’ Vegas Convention Calls for CEO Prosecutions & Union Pension Bailout
By: LaborUnionReport (Diary) | July 4th, 2011 at 08:00
Despite the bribery scandals, the dancers, and the jokes about the millions of their members’ dues that Teamster bosses spent in Las Vegas last week at the union’s 28th international convention, delegates did accomplish one thing of note: The delegates passed a resolution that, among other things, calls for a “financial rescue package for struggling union pensions” (also known as the $165 billion union pension bailout).
Following last year’s failure of Democrats (and a few Republicans, like new GOP-presidential hopeful Thad McCotter) to get taxpayers to shell out up to $165 billion to prop up union pension funds, unions have continued to bemoan the fact that they have been unable to dip their beaks into the public treasury as Wall St. fat cats did in 2008.
Meanwhile, as hundreds of union pension funds are listed in critical status, union bosses (including the Teamsters) continue to misleadingly blame the financial meltdown of 2008 for their ills. The fact of the matter is, many union pension funds were already underfunded before the economy tanked.
He told me what impressed them the most was not the work ethic of southerners or the state tax incentives, though these were nice. What impressed the company the most is how they absolutely shared the Japanese dislike of leftist unions. Management barely even had to keep an ear to the ground because the rank and file was so quick and enthusiastic about reporting any organizing activity so management could counter in a timely manner.
The southern worker understood better than most that it was idiot unions which drove the auto industry out of the north and they didn't want a similar fate to befall them. When Honda discovered the same attitude in the Columbus, Ohio area, they located their first north of the Ohio River plant there in 1982.
Toyota thought they would get an inside track on access to the lucrative California market when they signed an agreement with UAW and GM to open a plant in Fremont, California two years later. We all know how that turned out.
Sorry.
The same applies if a retired Federal employee is excessively paid. Their annuity pension is finalized by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). They would have to pay the money back as well.
What makes this story tragic is the guy who is nearly 90 years old. I think they should cut him a break.
The others who are collecting money they are not entitled to need to pay it back, and the excessive payments have to end.
That's the way things are.
Union-Free America, Beware: Obama’s NLRB Is Locked, Loaded & Ready To Do Union Bosses’ Bidding
By: LaborUnionReport (Diary) | August 13th, 2013 at 10:30 PM
It is now official. Barack Obama’s union-dominated National Labor Relations Board is now up to its full anti-employer potential with AFL-CIO attorney Nancy Schiffer and union lawyer Kent Hirozawa being sworn in, along with union attorney Mark Pearce resuming his role as chairman.
This is the first time the NLRB has had five sitting members since 2003, when Democrats began crippling George Bush’s NLRB in an effort to diminish its capacity on rulings.
While two Republicans, Harry I. Johnson, III and Philip A. Miscimarra were also sworn in, they are in the minority and, as a result, will only be useful for their dissent (which can sometimes be useful in federal courts).
Although Obama’s NLRB had been stymied for a period of time, thanks to the bi-partisan deal cutting by Senate Republicans, union-free employers are facing a more hostile environment not seen for the last 30 years or more.
In addition to scores of pro-union rulings that will likely continue on a case by case basis, via the attorneys at Labor Relations Today, two of the major “macro” issues that are of importance to America’s union-free workplace are:
I see this as just another example of pressure being placed on the populace of the United States. This is under the guise that it is all a ‘private’ pension. There are so many governmental rules applied to all pensions that I believe that it is impossible to have anything like this be totally ‘private’.
The end goal here is still the same I believe, Civil War or at the least Civil disruptions. And with so many cracks in our once unified social structure and pressure being applied from multiple directions, someone, somewhere is going to snap and do something ‘stupid’.
And once that is a ‘fait accompli’ then the hammer is going to come down hard on everyone who doesn’t knuckle down immediately to the regime.
” And it’s not some scam.”
I’m not so sure about that...
And this “audit”, I wonder just how high up it goes.
Declare bankruptcy. The debt will be discharged in full and the union can’t even legally hold anything from current or future checks for repayment.
The only question I have is who did he vote for?
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