Dockworkers Ask: Are Your Union Pension Funds Safe?
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| Too many fat cats trying to steal workers’ pensions. |
Jennifer Sargent, Northwest communications coordinator at the ILWU, sent us this from San Francisco.
In the current economic free fall, it’s wise to know where your pension funds are invested and whether they are as safe as you’d think. Union leaders of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and other union leaders are warning unions about a scheme that cost 60,000 Dutch dockworkers more than $1.7 billion in pension funds that had nothing to do with a sinking economy—and everything to do with a corporate sleight-of-hand.
To highlight the issue, more than 100 international protesters from labor and community groups rallied Jan. 12 at San Francisco’s landmark Transamerica Pyramid building. Union leaders from the ILWU, Teamsters and the Dutch dockworkers’ union FNV slammed the alleged looting of more than 60,000 Dutch dockworkers’ pension benefits by Dutch insurance giant Aegon, the parent company of Transamerica. The big corporation recently launched a plan to collect a huge hunk of cash from U.S. taxpayers under the bailout program but suddenly dropped the scheme last month.
