Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and their supporters attend a rally in 2016. Their Central States Pension Fund, of which Mike Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years. (Photo: Bloomberg)

Eleven months into a scheduled 13-month deployment, the Marines in Mike Walden's unit began carrying a deck of cards in the field. They were 52 days out from going home; for each day that passed, a card was pulled from the deck, memorializing the end that was in sight.

By the end of the card deck, Walden, a .50-caliber machine gunner, and his unit weren't going anywhere.

"When you get down to your last card and you're still there, you get a little nervous," recalls the Akron, Ohio native, who passed on a wrestling scholarship to enlist in the Marine Corps after high school.

"It was a war zone," he says unceremoniously. "We couldn't get out."

Walden's arrival in Vietnam synced with the North Vietnamese TET Offensive, the months-long siege on South Vietnam that began in 1968 and marked some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

He doesn't describe himself as what he clearly is—a patriot. Instead, Walden says he and a few classmates made a calculated decision to enlist. "It was the height of the war. We decided, 'Why don't we just sign up before we get drafted. If we live, we can come back and decide our future then'."

Walden returned after 15 months in Vietnam. He lingered for a bit in the Marine Corps stateside. He was made a "brig chaser" — prison guard — and later staged mock beach landings off the USS Newport News.

Eventually he left the Marine Corps and returned to Akron to go to college. He started his own transportation company, then was offered an office position with Roadway Express.

He opted for a position driving. Walden joined the Teamsters, and spent the next 31 years as a line haul driver. "It was a good paycheck," he says matter-of-factly.

The health benefits were solid. So was the promise of a secure retirement.

Tip of the spear

These days, Walden, a grandfather of nine who is staring down his septuagenarian years, is again at the tip of the spear. This time the battle has no bullets, but Walden, along with thousands of other pensioners, spends most of his waking hours warning anyone who will listen of its life and death implications.

Related: Only cash infusion can save Central States. other multiemployer plans facing insolvency

In the retirement industry, the plight of more than 10 million pensioners in collectively bargained retirement plans is known, if not well known.

Without intervention from the federal government and taxpayers, the Central States Pension Fund, of which Walden is a participant, and upwards of 130 other multiemployer plans, will go insolvent, some within a matter of a few years.

When the dominoes start to fall, so too will the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal agency charged with insuring single and multiemployer plans when they fail.

Geoff Manville, a principal on the government relations team at Mercer, is as dialed in as they come on retirement issues on Capitol Hill. The multiemployer pension crisis is "the elephant in the room," says Manville.

"It's the biggest issue facing Congress," he says— referring not just to retirement policy, but all issues.

Awareness of the elephant has come a long way in a short time, and now extends beyond the lawmakers on the committees and subcommittees with jurisdiction over retirement policy. That attention is due to the grassroots efforts of Walden and thousands of retired union workers.

"Mike is a force of nature," said Karen Friedman, executive vice president and policy director of the Pension Rights Center. "He's a leader. But he recognizes he's just one of thousands of people throughout this movement. These guys went from being retired truck drivers, and miners, and iron workers to being among the most effective, sophisticated advocates we've ever seen on Capitol Hill."

In a sense Walden is a reluctant leader. He stayed active in the Teamsters after retiring in 2011, and became a trustee of the Local 24 Retirees Club.  Then in 2013, a policy paper, "Solutions Not Bailouts," emerged from the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans.

In order to secure the future solvency of pensions and continued employer participation in collectively bargained plans, the paper called for cuts to existing benefits that would leave retirees and participants with less than what they were scheduled to get, but more than they would receive under PBGC's insurance.

"We received word they wanted to reduce our benefits and take away the anti-clawback provision," said Walden. "There were some good things in the paper, but those two provisions scared me."

Walden said he took the issue to other trustees at Local 24. "I said we need to get on defense now." His sense of urgency wasn't shared.

Over the next several months, Walden started voicing his concerns with other Teamsters, pension attorneys, and even traveled to Capitol Hill for an early hearing on the crisis.

His call for action met a fickle response, but in 2014, after a meeting with the Teamsters For A Democratic Union (TDU), a 12-member committee was created with the objective of pushing back on the prospect of pension cuts.

At its first meeting, the Northeast Ohio Committee to Protect Pensions was officially created. Walden agreed to become its president when no one else would. "I got stuck with that," he says.

From there he "went to school," spending his days and nights studying the legislative process, federal budgets, and the macroeconomic implications of thousands of retirees losing their pensions.

One of his main objectives was advocating for the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which was scheduled to sunset. Then, at the end of 2014, Congress passed and President Obama signed into law a budget that included the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, which gave the Treasury Department authority to rubberstamp benefit clawbacks in critical and declining pensions.

"They threw us under the bus, to pass something so ridiculous in the middle of the night with no input from retirees," said Walden. "The first thing that came to my mind was, what was I fighting for in Vietnam?"

Gathering force

If there was a good thing about MPRA from the perspective of a retired union worker, it was that it had the effect of focusing energy.

Walden had already been canvassing local union leaders in Pennsylvania, Missouri, and the upper Midwest to sound the alarm. After MPRA those efforts were redoubled. At a meeting in 2015 in St. Louis, Walden was named president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, which was comprised of local and regional independent committees around the country.

"We moved forward quickly from there," said Walden. "Our recognition was almost automatic in Washington. We won credibility because we stayed politically neutral—we don't have aisles. Just because we're union doesn't mean we're all Democrats."

By October of 2015, the Central States Pension Fund had applied to the Treasury Department to cut benefits under MPRA. The proposal included cuts up to 70 percent in the most extreme cases.

"We just couldn't live on what they were proposing," said Walden. As part of the application process, Treasury held field meetings open to the public. More than 300 Teamsters showed up to the first hearing. "That may have been the best move we made," added Walden.

Did the human faces sway Treasury's consideration of Central States' application? Those who know will probably never say. Treasury made no acknowledgement of the pensioners' role at the hearings or their lobbying on Capitol Hill when it denied Central States' application on the grounds that it was actuarially unsound.

The rescue that almost passed

NUCCP continued to grow, ultimately to 64 regional Committees to Protect Pensions. The movement aligned with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as well as miners and ironworker unions.

By 2016 both chambers of Congress were giving the multiemployer pension crisis concerted attention in committee hearings. Rallies staged by the coalition of pensioners would take place outside the halls of Congress on those days, often numbering in the thousands.

"When we started lobbying together in Washington, we didn't have a clue what we were doing, but we learned quickly," says Walden. "We were making so many suggestions, offering so many solutions at the time—some looked at us like we were crazy. Anything was better than losing our pensions."

The pensioners became close with key lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, on retirement committees. "We made some very good friends on both sides of the aisle," said Walden.

Meantime, competing proposals to rescue the pensions emerged. One, backed by UPS, the biggest employer in the Central States Plan, called for more modest pension cuts than previous proposals. It originally had the support of the Central States Plan trustees.

Another plan emerged from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. That more aggressive plan was designed to keep all pensions whole. Unions across the country debated the merits of each. Ultimately, IBT turned its proposal over to Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, and Rep. Richard Neal, D-MA — two lawmakers who had the juice to move legislation. And they did. In 2017, The Butch Lewis Act was introduced in the Senate.

The bill proposes saving pensions facing insolvency, as well as the PBGC, by raising cash through Treasury notes sold to institutional investors. The proceeds would be used to channel low-interest-rate loans to pensions over a 30-year period.

According to Walden, the bill, named after a Teamster and decorated Vietnam veteran who died shortly after he retired, came close to being attached to the budget bill at the end of 2017.

"It was thought that if Butch Lewis were attached to the spending bill in 2017, it would pass," explained Walden. "Behind the scenes, Republicans were saying 'we won't sponsor this, but we'll vote for it'."

But in the eleventh hour, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, the Senate majority leader, refused to add Butch Lewis to the spending package, according to Walden's account.

Joint Select Committee not expected to produce a solution

Two weeks from now, a Joint Select Committee comprised of eight Republicans and eight Democrats is scheduled to release a report on the multiemployer pension crisis, and if a majority on the committee can agree to it, legislation that would rescue the plans and the PBGC.

A preliminary score of Butch Lewis from the Congressional Budget Office put the cost of the bill at $100 billion. A later amended score reduced it to $36 billion.

Therein lies the rub. Rep. Phil Roe, R-TN, a member of the Select Committee, has voiced concerns that the pensions would struggle to repay the loans. Others have raised fears that even if the loans were repaid, the bill fails to make necessary reforms to the multiemployer pension system that are needed to prevent a future crisis.

Walden says Butch Lewis has "zero" chance of passing out of the Joint Select Committee.

"I don't see Republicans moving on anything," said Walden, who noted his appreciation for the work of Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Rob Portman, both members of the Joint Select Committee, on the issue.

"When I talk to members of Congress, I ask them to travel around the country and listen to these people. We've never asked for a bailout from the taxpayer — we're taxpayers too. We're just asking for a solution," says Walden.

Asked what would happen to him if the Central States plan were allowed to fail, Walden points to the experience of the Local 707 Teamsters in upstate New York.

In 2017, Local 707's proposal to reduce benefits was accepted by the Treasury Department, despite members voting the proposal down by a 2-to-1 margin. About 10,000 votes of 34,000 eligible voters were cast. Under MPRA, votes that are not cast are counted as yes votes.

Retired Teamsters in the plan saw their pensions cut up to 70 percent.

"In some cases they're choosing between food and medicine," says Walden. "They're suffering."

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