The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced today that it has approved the application submitted to the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) Program by the Trucking Employees of North Jersey Welfare Fund, Inc. Pension Plan (Trucking Employees Plan). The plan, based in Union City, New Jersey, covers 6,121 participants in the transportation industry.
The Trucking Employees Plan became insolvent in July 2021. At that time, PBGC started providing financial assistance to the plan. As required by law, the Trucking Employees Plan reduced participants’ benefits to the PBGC guarantee levels, which were roughly 50 percent below the benefits payable under the terms of the plan.
PBGC’s approval of the SFA application enables the plan to restore all benefit reductions caused by the plan’s insolvency and to make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit reductions. SFA will enable the plan to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future. The plan will receive $673.1 million in SFA, including interest to the expected date of payment to the plan.
“President Biden’s American Rescue Plan will deliver Special Financial Assistance to the Trucking Employees of North Jersey Welfare Fund, Inc. Pension Plan that ensures the 6,121 New Jersey transportation 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 Board of Directors. “This assistance will deliver the secure retirement these workers were promised in return for many years of hard work.”
In addition to the $673.1 million of SFA paid to the plan, PBGC’s Multiemployer Insurance Program will be repaid $16.7 million, which is the amount of the plan’s outstanding loans, including interest, for the financial assistance PBGC provided beginning in July 2021 and ending on the expected date of payment of SFA to the plan.
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