NATIONAL COORDINATING TABLE OF RETIRED AND PENSIONED ORGANIZATIONS OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC - Legal Status 8152

The PASO elections have passed and, as expected, the living conditions of the town as a whole have worsened. On the Monday after PASO, the Government implemented a significant devaluation imposed by the IMF and, as a consequence, has driven enormous price increases, both for goods, services and tariffs. The freezing of prices is announced after the increases have been made, with which, once again, the working class and the popular sectors are exploited to finance the maintenance and growth of business profits and the payment of illegitimate ma, illegal, fraudulent and hateful external debt contracted and refinanced behind their backs. The palliatives that are applied to the retiree sector, in order to mitigate the dire consequences of the adjustments, are more of the same. These are insufficient measures, which bring the minimum retirement credit -for the September to November quarter- to $85,000.- out of pocket plus the arbitrary bonus of $27,000.- that is, to a sum of $112,000- that covers only 42% of the Basic Basket of an older adult. This bonus decreases proportionally until it disappears when receiving a retirement of $170,000.- equivalent to two minimum assets. This adjustment is part of the cuts and labor and pension reforms that will be increased by the forces that guarantee subordination to the impositions of the IMF (organization of the large economic and political groups of the capitalist system) and that imply the liquidation of labor conquests, turning retirement into a survival subsidy and privatizing the pension system. Faced with this serious reality, the Coordinating Table of Organizations of Retirees and Pensioners calls to deepen the fight for the defense of the rights of retirees and pensioners, both with regard to urgent and substantive demands. In this sense we demand INCREASE IN ASSETS NOW!!! that guarantees that the minimum retirement income received by around 70% of all retirees and pensioners is equivalent to the amount of the Basic Basket for an older adult, prepared by the Ombudsman for the Third Age of CABA and that today, updated , is above $260,000.- and a proportional increase in the retirement scales. Likewise, we propose that from the corresponding state levels, the FREE TICKETS of public transport be implemented throughout the national territory for retirees. We reiterate once again the unity of the trade union, union, retiree, social, and popular organizations, consistent with the interests of the active and retired working class, for the debate on the draft Pension Law that a group of organizations are promoting and that includes - Plan a new public Pension System, pay-as-you-go, intergenerational, led and administered by active workers and retirees with a minority participation of the State as its guarantor. Enough of the pension system being a "box" of the government on duty, the contributions are from the workers.

PBGC Approves SFA Application for UFCW Local One Plan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 3, 2023 WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced today that it has approved the application submitted to the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) Program by the UFCW Local One Pension Plan (UFCW Local One Plan). The plan, based in Oriskany, New York, covers 19,177 participants in the service industry. The UFCW Local One Plan will receive approximately $764 million in special financial assistance, including interest to the expected date of payment to the plan. The plan was projected to become insolvent and run out of money in 2026. Without the SFA Program, the UFCW Local One Plan would have been required to reduce participants’ benefits to the PBGC guarantee levels upon plan insolvency, which is roughly 15 percent below the benefits payable under the terms of the plan. SFA will enable the plan to continue to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future. “These hard-working service industry employees helped build a better America and now the Biden-Harris administration is working to deliver the secure, dignified retirement they deserve,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. “By providing Special Financial Assistance, the Biden-Harris administration will ensure that these 19,177 workers in upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania get the benefits they have earned after a lifetime of hard work and can retire with dignity.” About the Special Financial Assistance Program The SFA Program was enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021. The program provides funding to severely underfunded multiemployer pension plans and will ensure that millions of America’s workers, retirees, and their families receive the pension benefits they earned. The SFA Program requires plans to demonstrate eligibility for SFA and to calculate the amount of assistance pursuant to ARP and PBGC’s regulations. SFA and earnings thereon must be segregated from other plan assets and may be used only to pay plan benefits and administrative expenses. Plans are not obligated to repay SFA to PBGC. Plans receiving SFA are also subject to certain terms, conditions and reporting requirements, including an annual statement documenting compliance with the terms and conditions. PBGC is authorized to conduct periodic audits of multiemployer plans that receive SFA. As of August 1, 2023, PBGC has approved nearly $52.2 billion in SFA to plans that cover over 751,000 workers, retirees, and beneficiaries. The SFA Program operates under a final rule, published in the Federal Register on July 8, 2022, which became effective August 8, 2022, and was amended effective January 26, 2023. About PBGC PBGC protects the retirement security of over 33 million American workers, retirees, and beneficiaries in both single-employer and multiemployer private sector pension plans. The agency’s two insurance programs are legally separate and operationally and financially independent. PBGC is directly responsible for the benefits of more than 1.5 million participants and beneficiaries in failed single-employer pension plans. The Single-Employer Program is financed by insurance premiums, investment income, and assets and recoveries from failed single-employer plans. The Multiemployer Program is financed by insurance premiums. Special financial assistance for financially troubled multiemployer plans is financed by general taxpayer monies.

Press Release 1635 "Wednesday for Retirees" August 1, 2023

From the National Coordinating Table of Organizations of Retirees and Pensioners we have been supporting, for years, the urgent need to advance in a law that establishes a new pension system. We insist on this point because, otherwise, we will continue to see how the governments of the day implement "patches" that are far from satisfying the legitimate demands of retirees and pensioners. As a backdrop are the demands of the IMF, the body of the large dominant economic groups of the capitalist system, in the agreements it has with the Government for the refinancing (without the essential investigation of the destination of these funds) of the illegitimate, illegal and fraudulent external debt contracted by the previous government. These demands are intended, with adjustments and underfunding of the pension system, to produce a reform aimed at privatizing the system, as the IMF has been doing internationally. Even in these days of the electoral campaign, there are candidates who try to justify having implemented, when they were civil servants, the decrease in retirement assets. That is why we are working on a bill that establishes a new public Pension System, pay-as-you-go, solidary, intergenerational, among other qualities. Draft new Social Security Law that we will present again because, during the last decade, in successive presentations in the National Chamber of Deputies, with the signature of deputies and hundreds of thousands of endorsement signatures and mobilizations of our people, the majorities Parliamentarians on duty refused to debate in the respective Commissions, preventing their parliamentary treatment. Those who need predictability are the workers and workers who cannot accept that in the last years of a working life, we have to be begging for a paltry improvement in our assets. Neither arbitrary bonuses, nor fake loans. We demand 82% mobile, incorporating and putting an end to illegal unregistered, precarious work, unemployment and underemployment. In the immediate and urgent, there is a reality that must be faced. WE DEMAND: an emergency increase that allows the minimum income to be equivalent to the Basic Basket of the Elderly, in accordance with the provisions of the Ombudsman for the Third Age of the CABA, and proportional in the pension scales. On the other hand, it is very important that free tickets for any means of transportation for retirees and pensioners from all over the country be established through the corresponding legal instrument.