District 190 Pension Seminar helps members prepare for retirement

On Saturday, June 1, about 100 IAM members and their partners from across District 190 came to the Local 1546 meeting hall to figure out their next step in life: retirement. The District held its first Pension Seminar since the spring of 2019 before the world was turned upside down by the pandemic.

The event included a detailed presentation by Automotive Industries Trust Funds Plan Manager Chuck Besocke, who gave the big picture overview of the pension trust. In a nutshell, the bailout, engineered by the Biden administration, ensures the fund is currently fully-funded and will be at least through 2051, if not for decades longer. He reviewed the history of the trust fund, which, over the years, required cuts to beloved benefits like the “rule of 85,” and the impact of those cuts on current and future retirees.

The issue that caused the most angst and discussion in the group came up when Besocke stated that members who have been divorced must submit their divorce papers to be pension-eligible.

“The number one reason pensions get delayed— not just our union but all unions—is getting divorce papers.” Whether a former spouse is or is not entitled to a portion of your pension, the trust needs a copy of the papers to process the payments, or they will cut the pension by 50% until the correct distribution is determined.

Each member who had pre-registered for the event was able to meet with a pension trust consultant to privately review their own benefits status, ask questions, and ascertain when they could retire and how much they could expect to get every month.

Most importantly, it would not have been a District 190 event if Business Rep Robby Pintos and his crew of supporting business reps (Jerry Gutierrez, Donte Vickers, Brian Fealy, Pedro Gonzalez, Pedro Mendez, and Steve Older) had not prepared a huge and delicious breakfast spread for all in attendance.

Word to the wise: Double check your pension statements against your work history

Take the case of a East Bay-based service advisor. This member had started as a Teamster but within two years, he became a Service Advisor and Local 1546 member. As a Teamster, at that time, he received half of the IAM pension rate. But as soon as he got raised into a new classification, he was eligible for a full pension. However, either the trust fund or the employer didn’t move this member onto the proper list for a period of time. (According to Trust Fund records, he became a Machinist in 2004 but the Trust didn’t know that he changed positions in four years earlier.)

The Trust Fund needs to be told of changes because they don’t have access to employment records. “Once they corrected the record for this member, they’ll add somewhere $6-9,000 into his pension,” says DBR Don Crosatto. “This will produce a substantial increase for the rest of his life.”

Crosatto recommends that every member go back and look carefully at your pension history to double check potential coding errors. If you worked in different classifications during your career, make sure that the contribution amount changes when your classification changes.

“I’m sure that this member is not the only one this happened to,” Crosatto adds. “It’s hard to track, but in this case, he was paid $210/month for the pension for a period of four years when it should have been $420. That definitely makes a difference.”