“We’re turn­ing up the heat, and we are going to keep turn­ing up the heat high­er and high­er” on fed­er­al offi­cials and law­mak­ers, says Bob Ams­den, a retired truck dri­ver from the Mil­wau­kee area who has emerged as a high-pro­file advo­cate for Team­ster pensioners.

The imme­di­ate tar­get of the angry Team­sters was the U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury, which is in charge of admin­is­ter­ing the new law, the Mul­ti­em­ploy­er Pen­sion Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) . Gov­ern­ment offi­cials spon­sored the first-ever pub­lic hear­ing on MPRA last week, and the retired work­ers swarmed the meet­ing to make it clear they are alarmed and unhap­py at the like­li­hood that the Team­sters Cen­tral States Pen­sion Fund is at the top of the list for cuts.

About 300 angry Team­sters descend­ed on Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Sep­tem­ber 10, demand­ing fed­er­al action to pro­tect the pen­sions of union mem­bers threat­ened with ben­e­fit cuts. The retired Team­sters are among a group of as many as 1.5 mil­lion retirees from a long list of dif­fer­ent labor unions nation­wide that could see their pen­sions slashed under a new law qui­et­ly approved late last year.

Ams­den and oth­er union mem­bers face cuts because MPRA allows pen­sion fund trustees new free­dom to reduce promised ben­e­fits in cas­es where the long-term sol­ven­cy of the fund is in dan­ger. Under MPRA, any such cuts must be approved by the Trea­sury Depart­ment first, and gov­ern­ment offi­cials are cur­rent­ly in the process of writ­ing the rules and reg­u­la­tions of the approval process.

A sec­ondary tar­get for the riled-up retirees, who trav­elled to Wash­ing­ton from Ohio, Wis­con­sin and a num­ber of oth­er states, were mem­bers of Con­gress, who are being lob­bied to repeal MPRA out­right. As report­ed at In These Times ear­li­er this year, pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vermont) is spon­sor­ing repeal leg­is­la­tion that would shore up fail­ing pen­sion funds and pro­tect the income of union retirees.

Fol­low­ing the mass meet­ing with Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cials, union mem­bers fanned out across Capi­tol Hill in a coor­di­nat­ed lob­by effort aimed at select mem­bers of Con­gress, accord­ing to Ams­den. The bad news, how­ev­er, is that the Sanders bill — co-spon­sored in the House by Rep. Mar­cy Kap­tur (D‑Ohio) — has gained only 23 co-spon­sors since it was intro­duced in June, with no pub­lic sup­port at all from the Repub­li­can Par­ty lead­ers who con­trol the majori­ties in both hous­es, he reports.

With chances of repeal look­ing slim, atten­tion is focus­ing on renowned lawyer Ken­neth Fein­berg, who has been appoint­ed by Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Jacob Lew as ​“Spe­cial Mas­ter” to over­see the process of pen­sion cuts. Fein­berg, who took on high pro­file roles in award­ing finan­cial claims relat­ed to the 9⁄ 11 ter­ror­ist attacks and the 2010 Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill dis­as­ter, has made a good impres­sion on the Team­ster retirees in his new MPRA role, Ams­den says. That extends to Team­sters Pres­i­dent James Hof­fa, who told In These Times that ​“Fein­berg is going to help us. He’s a good guy … I think he is a fair man.”

“Fein­berg has made a huge impres­sion,” Ams­den con­firms. ​“He is not going to be told what to do” by pen­sion offi­cials anx­ious to impose cuts quick­ly. ​“He is not going to be told what to do by Cen­tral States, not by any­body,” he says, refer­ring to a Team­sters pen­sion fund.

Hof­fa added that that the Team­sters union if firm­ly allied with the retirees in demand­ing MPRA repeal and, in the alter­nate, to ensur­ing that any cuts from Cen­tral States Fund ben­e­fits are designed to pro­tect the most vul­ner­a­ble retirees. In a Sep­tem­ber 10 joint press con­fer­ence with Sen. Sanders, Hof­fa revealed ​“we get calls every­day” at union head­quar­ters from wor­ried pen­sion­ers. ​“One mem­ber … was afraid, and he said ​‘I’m gonna com­mit sui­cide [because of loss of income] … It scared the hell out of us.”

Fein­berg has offered retirees assur­ances that any plan to cut ben­e­fits will be sub­ject to a fair and delib­er­a­tive process, Ams­den adds. This has calmed ini­tial fears that cuts would be imposed as ear­ly as this year, and cur­rent pre­dic­tions are that no cuts can go into effect until mid-2016 at the ear­li­est, he says. Retiree groups have received fur­ther assur­ances that they will be con­sult­ed on a reg­u­lar basis as the process moves forward.

Almost all the atten­tion last week was on the Team­sters and the Cen­tral States Pen­sion Fund, but MPRA applies with equal force to any union pen­sion plan that is in finan­cial trou­ble. No oth­er pen­sion plan has received the same pub­lic atten­tion as Cen­tral States, but some experts believe there are 100 to 200 oth­er union plans that could be sub­ject to cuts in the future, direct­ly affect­ing up to 1.5 mil­lion retirees.

“And believe me, the retirees here (at the Sept. 10 pub­lic hear­ing) rep­re­sent only a frac­tion of those affect­ed. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of retired food work­ers, brick­lay­ers pip­efit­ters and oth­er retirees are also in dan­ger of los­ing up to 60 per­cent of their pen­sions. Most of them just don’t know it yet,” said Karen Fried­man, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton-based Pen­sion Rights Cen­ter. ​“This isn’t just unfair — it is out­ra­geous and undemocratic.”