The Biden administration announced Friday that it has averted perilous cuts to United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) pensions across Pennsylvania after receiving special funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
President Joe Biden was in Philadelphia on Friday to show off the $684.4 million the UFCW Tri-State Plan, which covers more than 29,000 service workers, will receive from the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program. The pension plan was projected to become insolvent in 2028, which would mean a 15% reduction in employees’ monthly retirement benefits.
The SFA introduced under the American Rescue Plan, a Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill signed into law in 2021. As of November 1, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC) has approved $69.5 billion in SFA funds for retirement plans covering approximately 1.2 million workers, retirees and beneficiaries, according to the White House.
John Dean of King of Prussia, a member of UFCW 1776 for 36 years, said Friday in Philadelphia that as a union shop steward at the Acme market where he works, he will receive questions from members about pensions plan. “After several meetings and gathering information, I had the answers, but they weren’t good,” Dean said.
He learned that the pension plan was heading toward insolvency and saw little hope of solving the problem with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House. However, after Biden was elected and passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, “the lives of our members and their families have changed. Thanks to the Biden Harris administration, our pensions, which were on the brink of insolvency by 2026, are now secure into the 2050s,” he said.
Biden reminded the crowd Friday at 692 Sprinkler Fitters in Northeast Philadelphia that the legislation that made pension protections possible was named after the tardy Teamster Butch Lewis, who fought to protect union retirees.
“Before the Butch Lewis Act became law, union workers and retirees faced pension benefit cuts of at least 70% through no fault of their own,” Biden said. He noted that no Republicans in Congress voted for the American Rescue Plan. “But now [union workers] we know, because of what we’ve done, we’re seeing the full amount of the pensions they’ve worked hard for, and they’re going to get it.”
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su told the Capital-Star that many of the affected supermarket workers are part of the sandwich generation caring for children and parents. “If not our family members, then our friends and neighbors,” she said. “We see that these people do hard work and make sure we have food on our tables, and ensuring their retirement is about putting food on their tables.”
During a stop in Philadelphia, Biden cited U.S. Senator Bob Casey (R-Pennsylvania), who he said “championed” the Butch Lewis Act.
“Workers are the backbone of our Commonwealth, and thanks to the American Rescue Plan, tens of thousands of families can continue to rely on their retirement benefits without worrying that their plans will be curtailed,” Casey said in a statement. “I fought for this amendment because I know how critical pensions are to the future of thousands of Pennsylvania families and how terrifying it was for those families to have the rug pulled out from under them.”
Biden is making a historic visit to metro Detroit to rally with striking auto workers
Biden said he was proud to be recognized as the “most pro-union president in history,” something he insisted on during his brief re-election bid. He was the first sitting president to picket when he joined the United Auto Workers in Michigan during their strike against the Big Three U.S. auto companies last year.
According to the White House, Pennsylvania has the second-largest number of people who have saved in retirement under Biden (65,000). Michigan tops the list with 80,000, and Wisconsin is third with 33,000.
All three are key Blue Wall swing states where both presidential candidates have campaigned tirelessly and will continue to do so until the eve of the election. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, will visit Allentown, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia on Monday, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, scheduled rallies in Reading and Pittsburgh on the same day.
On Saturday, Biden will run for Harris-Walz’s seat in his hometown of Scranton.
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