[Fido969]

There are almost 400,000 retirees in this pension fund. The local affiliates that support it probably have fewer than 200,000 working members.

Us regular stiffs need to fund our IRAs or 401(k)s as we go.

Huge unfunded liabilities relate to management strategies, and shouldn't be dependent on optimistic projected demographics. Those are the elements of a Ponzi scheme. Why should I have to bail them out?

[Alberta's Child]

In the case of the Teamsters, there were two particular factors in the demise of its pension plan:

1. The “optimistic demographic projections” you describe are an issue in all defined-benefit retirement plans (even Social Security). Simply put, people are living far longer today that they were when they started contributing to the pension plans.

2. For the Teamsters, the demographic issue has been exacerbated by declining membership in the union over time — even as trucking jobs have grown considerably. Much of this is due to the deregulation of the industry in the early 1980s that changed the trucking business dramatically.