Teamsters Tell Aegon To Keep Its Hands Off Dutch Dockworkers' Pension Benefits

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and International Longshore and Warehouse Union today protested the reported looting of more than 60,000 Dutch Dockworkers’ pension benefits by Dutch insurance giant Aegon in front of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Transamerica is a subsidiary of Aegon.

Aegon acquired Optas in 2007, formerly the Harbour Pension Fund, for €1.5 billion and with it the pension assets for the sole benefit of some 60,000 Dutch dockworkers. Aegon now claims the assets as its own and maintains that the port workers and employers have no special claim to them.

“We are here to tell Aegon to keep its hands off the Dutch Dockworkers’ pension benefits,” said Teamsters Western Region International Vice President Chuck Mack at the rally. “This company has been scheming for six years to steal these funds from the workers and we can’t let them get away with it.”

 

Aegon has made a habit of attempting to manipulate the system. After accepting €3 billion in public assistance from the Dutch government, the company applied for a Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) bailout by the U.S. government, which they hoped to qualify for through the proposed purchase of a small, distressed bank in Maryland. 

 

A press release last month announced that Aegon had tentatively withdrawn its application and has reserved the right to reapply should they need additional funds.

 

In a letter to Rep. Barney Frank, Chairman of the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee and Sen. Chris Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today urged Congress to draft legislation that will close the loopholes that Aegon hoped to exploit to attain TARP funds.

 

“U.S. taxpayer money should not be used to rescue companies oversees that scheme to exploit our system undermining the interests of workers, investors and communities,” Hoffa wrote.

 

Because many Teamster-affiliated pension and benefit funds have invested in Transamerica over several decades, Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer C. Thomas Keegel today sent letters to the fund trustees alerting them to the business practices of Aegon and Transamerica.

 

“We cannot afford to entrust the retirement security of our members with a company that would misappropriate funds in this way,” Keegel said. “That is why I have sent a letter to hundreds of Teamster benefit fund trustees alerting them to the business practices of Aegon and urging them to evaluate the business they do with Transamerica.”

 

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters was founded in 1903 and represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.