Pension Rights Center’s Pension Promises Initiative

The Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act passes Congress – inspiring nationwide celebrations by retirees whose hard-earned pensions have been saved.

On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act, which included the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act, fulfilling the PRC’s Pension Promises Initiative’s long-sought goals —  to protect the pensions of multiemployer plan retirees and to keep the multiemployer pension system from collapsing. After years of intensive efforts, retirees and their supporters, including PRC, rejoiced in celebration.

The Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act gave Congress authority to provide the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) with approximately $86 billion to help keep financially struggling multiemployer plans solvent for 30 years. Under this law, workers and retirees in struggling plans will continue receiving their full benefits, provided that their plans apply for and are approved to receive aid. Also, plans that had earlier cut benefits under MPRA can now restore those funds to their members. Read our fact sheet about the bill.

Congress passes pension reform for coal miners; the Treasury Department denies the MPRA application of the American Federation of Musicians & Employers’ Pension Fund; the House passes the Emergency Pension Plan Reform Act of 2020 (EPPRA); Senators Grassley (R-IA) and Alexander (R-TN) introduce the Chris Allen Multiemployer Pension Capitalization and Reform Act.

In an encouraging step forward, Congress passed pension relief for tens of thousands of coal miners – showing that multiemployer reform legislation, drafted correctly, can be a bipartisan issue. The new law provided funds to pay for the pensions of 92,000 retired miners and health care benefits for 13,000 active miners.

In the same year, PRC wrote comments on behalf of 180 retired musicians who were facing 40 percent pension cuts because their plan, the American Federation of Musicians & Employers’ Pension Fund, filed an application with the Treasury Department under MPRA. The application was denied, but the plan submitted a revised application.

The House of Representatives passed the Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act (EPPRA) as part of its COVID-19 relief package, known as the HEROES Act. EPPRA proposed to provide federal funds to the PBGC, enabling it to help troubled pension plans survive into the future while protecting the full benefits or workers and retirees.

In an attempt for an end-of-the-year deal, there were reported negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Republican Senate leaders Charles Grassley and Lamar Alexander, who introduced their own multiemployer bill, called the Chris Allen Multiemployer Pension Capitalization and Reform Act. Ultimately, Congress failed to reach a bipartisan agreement.

The House of Representatives passes the Butch Lewis Act, but the Senate takes a different path.

In the summer and fall of 2019, the leadership of the House of Representatives helped move the Butch Lewis Act, a federal loan program, through key congressional committees.  In July, the bill passed the House chamber by a 264-169 vote.

However, despite progress in the House, key Senators in the majority party took a different path.  Rather than support a loan program, Senator Grassley, the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Alexander, the Chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, released a proposal called the Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization and Reform Plan. It provided alternative ways to solve the multiemployer crisis, many borrowed from the compromise proposal that had been drafted by the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Plans (see below).

Congress forms the Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Plans.

Much fanfare surrounded the introduction of the original Butch Lewis Act in late 2017 after it was introduced in Congress by Representative Richard Neal (D- MA) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). That, combined with political pressure from grassroots activists, along with educational efforts and technical assistance from PRC and allied organizations, led to a deal in early 2018 between House and Senate leaders. The deal created a bipartisan, bicameral special committee charged with developing a compromise comprehensive solution by the end of the year. The Committee succeeded in developing the contours of a new solution, but in the end, failed to reach consensus among its members.

Although the Joint Select Committee disbanded without completing its mission, the Committee’s educational hearings, deliberations and behind-the-scenes discussions expanded awareness of multiemployer issues among Committee members and many other congressional representatives and staff. It also steeled the resolve of key policymakers to move forward to solve the crisis – and ensure that workers and retirees’ benefits would not be cut.

The introduction of the first Butch Lewis Act.

The Pension Promises Initiative’s work, along with efforts from activists and a growing list of supporting union and retiree organizations, inspired the introduction of federal legislation called the Butch Lewis Act that, if enacted, would have provided loans to underfunded plans and would have protected the full benefits of workers and retirees. The bill, introduced in the Senate by Senator Brown and in the House by Representative Neal, had the support of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Pelosi, who held a joint press conference in support of the bill – with hundreds of affected retirees in attendance.

Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduce the Keep our Pension Promises Act (KOPPA) in direct response to the protests waged by PRC and retirees about the unfairness of MPRA.

KOPPA, if enacted, would have created a Legacy Fund within the PBGC to provide money to ailing multiemployer plans to help them survive and pay full benefits to workers and retirees.

Congress passes MPRA, allowing for unprecedented cuts to retirees’ pensions as a misguided way of saving certain severely underfunded multiemployer plans.  

PRC opposed MPRA from the start, joining with retirees and other organizations to develop legal arguments and strategies that ultimately helped convince the U.S. Treasury Department in 2016 to reject unfair and significant cuts to about 126,000 retiree-members of the Central States Pension Fund, the largest of the nation’s underfunded plans. This was an enormous accomplishment, igniting a new movement advocating fairness for plan members and retirees.