multiemployer defined benefit pension plans

Local plasterers and members of OPEIU Local 11 have reason to rejoice after final rules for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Fund were announced.

Pension plans that cut retiree benefits to restore solvency would face the toughest dilemma under the pension rescue rules announced July 9.

“This is a historic achievement to secure the pension benefits of hardworking union members, and the most substantial policy ever passed to further the solvency of our nation's multiemployer pension plans,” said U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh in a July 9 press statement about newly issued rules implementing a government rescue of failing pension funds. Walsh, pictured above at a June 24 event in Indianapolis, is a former leader of Laborers Local 223 and the Boston Building Trades Council.

The just-passed COVID relief bill will rescue and restore over 100 declining union pension plans.

The bill would give federal loans to union multi-employer pension plans to prevent their collapse.

The Butch-Lewis Act would lend money to pension plans to give them a chance to recover.

The Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans was supposed to vote on a solution to the looming crisis in union-sponsored pensions by the end of November.

10 million workers are covered by multiemployer pensions, but at least half are in serious trouble