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Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said that he plans to reintroduce 2017 legislation that would define worker claims in bankruptcy as administrative expenses, meaning they’d be paid in full, like the investment bankers, consultants, lawyers and liquidators who earn millions of dollars dismantling dying companies, Bloomberg News reported. It comes after 19 Democrats, including Ryan and presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, teamed up in July to demand answers from Toys “R” Us’s owners after its bankruptcy left workers in the lurch. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) released a video featuring struggling former Toys “R” Us workers on the first Black Friday since their layoffs. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), another 2020 candidate, publicly challenged former Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert’s “commitment to the company’s employees” in a January letter. Ryan's bill would prioritize pension claims for fired workers when their companies go under. It joins legislation to hike taxes on the wealthiest Americans, provide wage and leave guarantees and restrict corporate share buybacks. Though the bill is a longshot to become law because it would have to pass the Republican Senate, it could lead to legislation on the state level that would complicate the bankruptcy process.

More than 200 House Democrats are sponsoring a bill to expand Social Security benefits, funded by a dramatic increase in taxes. California, Connecticut, Illinois and Oregon have established state-run retirement plans for private sector-workers, which some progressives hope will supplant 401(k)s. But there is no retirement crisis among either today’s retirees or tomorrow’s, according to a Wall Street Journal commentary. Eight in 10 retirees tell Gallup they have enough money to “live comfortably,” and 6 in 10 working-age households say the same. Seventy-five percent of retirees tell the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances they have “at least enough to maintain [their] standard of living,” up from 61 percent in 1992. Census Bureau research that uses Internal Revenue Service data to measure retirees’ incomes found that the over-65 poverty rate was only 6.7 percent in 2012, down from 9.7 percent in 1990 and lower than any other age group. Read the full commentary. (Subscription required.) 

*The views expressed in this commentary are from the author/publication cited, are meant for informative purposes only, and are not an official position of ABI.

Elizabeth, N.J.-based New England Motor Freight, Inc. says that it could lay off as many as 1,690 workers as it undergoes chapter 11 bankruptcy, NJ.com reported. The company — which provides small freight or less-than-truckload shipping services in the United States and Canada — sent the state a WARN notice saying that the job losses would be effective on Feb. 15, four days after it and 10 related entities filed for chapter 11 protection. It’s unclear if those layoffs have already occurred. New England Motor Freight was purchased by Myron P. Shevell in 1977 from Farmland Dairies. Since then it has grown from 55 units and five terminals to more than 10,000 pieces of equipment and 40 terminals throughout the Northeast, Midwest and Puerto Rico, according to its website.

The U.S. economy has added jobs for 100 consecutive months, and unemployment recently touched its lowest level in 49 years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Workers are so scarce that, in many parts of the country, low-skill jobs are being handed out to pretty much anyone willing to take them — and high-skilled workers are in even shorter supply. There are still fault lines: Jobs are still scarce for people living in rural areas of the country. The tight labor market of the moment may also be masking some fundamental shifts in the way we work that will hurt the job prospects of many people later on, especially those who lack advanced degrees and skills. In metro areas with fewer than 100,000 people and in rural America, the average unemployment last year was a half-percentage point higher compared to metro areas with more than a million people, according to analysis by job search site Indeed.com.

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s (D) budget plans unveiled on Wednesday proposed to sell $2 billion of bonds to inject cash into the state’s retirement system, a tactic tried in 2003 that failed to stop the swelling pension-fund debt that’s pushed Illinois’s credit-rating to the cusp of junk, Bloomberg News reported. But his deputy governor, Dan Hynes, said that it won’t be a way for the government to shirk its annual contributions to the funds, as happened after Governor Rod Blagojevich’s record $10 billion debt sale sixteen years ago. "This time you have people who understand the devastating effects of doing what he did," said Robert Martwick, a state representative who chairs the House’s pension committee. The potential borrowing is part of a broader plan by the new governor to tackle Illinois’s $134 billion debt to its pension funds, one that also includes raising taxes and potentially handing government assets like office buildings over to the retirement system. Hynes said last week that the $2 billion would supplement Illinois’s annual contribution —  not be used to cover it —  in a wager that the investment earnings will reduce what the state owes.

Gov. Ned Lamont (D) presented his first budget proposal on Wednesday, suggesting sweeping changes to pensions and an expanded sales tax to close a $3.7 billion deficit projected over the next two years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Lamont’s $43.2 billion spending plan for the next two fiscal years calls for cities and towns to begin paying a portion of teacher pension costs. Currently, the state government picks up the entire cost. He also is asking state workers to accept lower cost-of-living adjustments for their pension benefits during years when the public retirement system has poor returns on investment. The governor also wants to begin charging sales tax on legal, accounting and real-estate services. The budget also calls for instituting highway tolls to help pay for transportation improvements. One option, which could bring in as much as $200 million annually, calls for tolling only trucks. A second option, congestion pricing, would toll all vehicles, charging more at busy times, and could generate up to $800 million annually. Lamont, who campaigned last year on his record as a cable-television entrepreneur who would use his business savvy to fix the state’s finances, is already facing opposition. Unions representing state employees said they don’t want to make more concessions after public-sector workers have agreed to nearly $2 billion in givebacks through agreements negotiated over the past decade. Lamont’s cost-of-living adjustment proposal is subject to collective bargaining, and union leaders said they aren’t interested.

Westmoreland Coal Co. has received permission to end retiree benefits and scrap its union contracts with workers at two of its mines after the company said it needed to make dramatic cuts to its labor costs to survive bankruptcy, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bankruptcy Judge David R. Jones on Friday granted Westmoreland’s requests to terminate ongoing medical obligations for its retirees and reject collective-bargaining agreements at mines in Wyoming and North Dakota. The ruling will permit Westmoreland to unload its U.S. and Canadian mines to lenders in chapter 11 and keep the business running outside of bankruptcy. Termination of the retiree medical benefits, estimated at $329 million, and modification of the agreements is a condition of the transaction.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has approved benefits reductions for the Mid-Jersey Trucking Industry and Local 701 Pension Fund, and the Toledo Roofers Local No. 134 Pension Fund, Chief Investment Officer reported. They are the 11th and 12th pension plans to receive approval for a reduction in benefits from the Treasury Department since the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) was enacted into law. Meanwhile, the New York-based Local 807 Labor-Management Pension Fund has withdrawn its application for benefits cuts, but said it reserves the right to resubmit a revised application with additional information in the future. For the Mid-Jersey Trucking and Toledo Roofers pension plans, the Treasury Department said it has determined that both are eligible to reduce benefits under the MPRA, and that their applications satisfied the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code as added by the MPRA.