U.S. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) championed a bill that he authored to reform the multi-employer pension plan system during a committee hearing on Tuesday.
Portman, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, participated in a hearing on recent reforms and current challenges facing the multi-employer pension program.
Portman’s Pension Accountability Act, S. 2147, would make a number of key changes to the Multi-employer Pension Reform Act.
Under Portman’s bill, participant votes would be binding in all situations involving struggling pension plans seeking to make cuts. The bill would also count only returned ballots, no longer counting non-returned ballots as “yes” votes.
“If there were hundreds of thousands of Social Security beneficiaries getting their retirement benefits cut by as much as 70 percent, there would be a national outrage,” Portman said. “These teamsters played by the rules…(They) did exactly what they were told to do and worked long hours and many years with the expectation (their pensions) would be there…We need to work together and figure this out.”
The Pension Accountability Act’s goal is to give workers and retirees more say when a pending multi-employer pension bankruptcy requires major changes to pension payments. The measure would prevent more than 48,000 pensions from being cut in Ohio without pension holders having a say in the process.