WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) joined Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to announce that the roughly 2,000 workers and retirees in the United Iron Workers’ (UIW) Local #17 pension plan will have the retirement benefits they earned restored in full, thanks to Brown’s Butch Lewis Act. The United States Department of Labor (DOL), through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), has approved $48.9 million through a Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program for Local 17. The fund was enacted as a part of the American Rescue Plan. Under the SFA program cash payments will be made to financially troubled multiemployer pension plans to ensure that such plans can continue paying retirees’ benefits. Brown has been fighting for this fix for years and was able to secure key provisions based on his Butch Lewis Act in the American Rescue Plan. Brown named the legislation in memory of Butch Lewis, the former retired head of Teamsters Local 100 in southwest Ohio.
 
“Today we are finally keeping the promise to Ohio Iron Workers, and restoring the retirement security they earned,” said Brown. “After years of advocacy by workers, retirees, and small business owners in Ohio, including Local 17, we finally saved the pensions that union workers earned over a lifetime, with no cuts. For more than a century, Local 17 has helped build northeast Ohio. This pension fix will help Local 17 and the small businesses it works with to grow and to continue providing living wages and dignified work for Ohioans.”
 
Retirees in Local 17 had their pensions cut by as much as 60% in 2017, and they’ve been living with those cuts since then. Receiving the SFA means that Local 17 will:
 
  • Restore retirees’ full earned benefit in their monthly checks moving forward,
 
  • Receive $18 million to make retirees whole for the cuts to their benefits since 2017,
 
  • Put their plan on the path to solvency going forward, protecting the benefits of active workers.
 
For years, Brown led efforts to save these Ohioans’ pensions, touring the state to stand with Ohio retirees, workers and their families, and co-chairing a Congressional Committee on the pension crisis in 2018. Those efforts led to Brown’s Butch Lewis Act being included in the American Rescue Plan, which saved the pensions of more than 100,000 Ohioans.
 
“President Biden’s American Rescue Plan will deliver $48.9 million in Special Financial Assistance to the Iron Workers Local 17 Pension Fund that ensures these 1,900 construction workers and retirees covered by this plan will receive the retirement benefits they have earned,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, chair of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Board of Directors. “This assistance will deliver the secure retirement these workers were promised in return for many years of hard work.”
 
“This is a lifechanging moment for thousands of active Ironworkers, retirees, and their families. Our union has fought for changes to the multiemployer pension system for decades to ensure Ironworkers in every one of our plans have the same opportunity to retire with dignity. Senator Sherrod Brown and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur have stood with us every step of the way – they have been champions for working people everywhere, but especially for the members and retirees of Ironworkers Local 17,” said Eric Dean President International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers.
 
About 10 million Americans participate in multiemployer pension plans and about 1.5 million of them are in plans that are quickly running out of money. Many of these troubled plans cover workers who are on the front lines of the COVID-19 public health crisis, such as trucking, food processing, grocery store workers, and others. Even before the pandemic, workers, businesses, and retirees faced a crisis and were in dire need of our help.
 
The Butch Lewis Act secured retirement benefits for workers and retirees in endangered pension plans for 30 years—with no cuts to earned benefits.
 
Brown’s Butch-Lewis Act will:
 
·          Keep multiemployer pension plans solvent and well-funded for 30 years—with no cuts to earned benefits of participants and beneficiaries;
 
·          Restore full benefits for retirees in plans that previously had to take cuts and increase the maximum Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) insurance amount; and
 
·          Require each plan that receives assistance file regular status reports with the PBGC and Congressional Committees, to prevent recurrence and protect retirees’ benefits.  
 

###