President Joe Biden, center, gets his picture taken with supporters shortly after giving a speech at the United Steelworkers Headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh on Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (Steve Mellon/Pittsburgh Union Progress)
The Biden administration on Friday announced that looming cuts for United Food and Commercial Workers’ (UFCW) pensions across Pennsylvania have been averted, after receiving special funding from the American Rescue Plan Act.
President Joe Biden was in Philadelphia Friday to tout the $684.4 million that the UFCW Tri-State Plan, which covers more than 29,000 service industry workers, will receive from the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program. The pension plan was projected to become insolvent in 2028, meaning reductions to the workers’ monthly pension benefits of 15%.
The SFA was enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill Biden signed in 2021. As of Nov. 1, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC) has approved $69.5 billion in SFA funds to pension plans that cover about 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 shop steward for the union at the Acme market where he works he would get questions from members about the pension plan. “After going to a few meetings and gathering information, I had the answers, and they weren’t good,” Dean said.
He learned the pension plan was headed toward insolvency and saw little hope of a fix with Republicans controlling Congress and the White House. But after Biden was elected, and passed the American Rescue Plan in 2021, “and it was life changing for our members and their families. Thanks to the Biden Harris administration, our pension, which was on the verge of being insolvent by 2026 is now secure into the 2050s,” he said.
Biden reminded the gathering at the Sprinkler Fitters Local 692 in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday that the legislation that made the pension protection possible was named for the late Teamster Butch Lewis, who fought to protect union retirees’ benefits.
“Before the Butch Lewis Act became the law of the land, union workers and retirees faced cuts of up to 70% or more of the retirement benefits through no fault of their own,” Biden said. He noted that no Congressional Republicans had voted for the American Rescue Plan. “But now [union workers] know because of what we’ve done, we see the full amount of the pensions they worked hard for, and they’ll receive it.”
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su told the Capital-Star in an interview that many of the affected supermarket workers are part of the sandwich generation taking care of children and parents. “These are, if not our own family members they are our friends and neighbors,” she said. “These are people that we see doing the hard work, and they make sure that we have food on our tables, and making sure they have their retirement is about ensuring they get food on theirs.”
During the stop in Philadelphia, Biden called out U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) who he said had “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 relying on their pensions without worrying that their plans may be cut,” Casey said in a statement. “I fought for this fix because I know how critical pensions are to the futures of thousands of Pennsylvania families, and how scary it was for those families to face the possibility of the rug being pulled out from underneath them.”
Biden makes historic visit to metro Detroit picket line to rally with striking auto workers
Biden said he was proud to be considered the “most pro-union president in history,” something he pushed during his brief reelection bid. He was the first sitting president to walk a picket line when he joined United Auto Workers in Michigan last year during their strike against the Big Three American auto companies.
According to the White House, Pennsylvania has the second-highest number of people who had their pensions saved under Biden, at 65,000. Michigan tops the list, at 80,000, and Wisconsin is third, at 33,000.
All three are key “Blue Wall” swing states that both presidential candidates have campaigned in relentlessly, and will continue to do so up 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 GOP nominee, has rallies planned in Reading and Pittsburgh the same day.
Biden will campaign for the Harris-Walz ticket on Saturday in his childhood hometown of Scranton.
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