The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced today that it has approved the application submitted to the Special Financial Assistance (SFA) Program by the Alaska Ironworkers Pension Plan (Alaska Ironworkers Plan). The plan, based in Anchorage, Alaska, covers 744 participants in the construction industry.
On July 1, 2018, the Alaska Ironworkers Plan implemented a benefit suspension under the terms of the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) in order to address the plan’s troubled financial condition at that time and its projected insolvency. The plan reduced benefits of about 650 plan participants. On average, affected participants’ benefits were reduced 25 percent.
PBGC’s approval of the SFA application enables the plan to restore benefits suspended under the terms of MPRA and to make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit suspensions. SFA will enable the plan to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future. The plan will receive $53.5 million in SFA, including interest to the expected date of payment to the plan.
“These 744 ironworkers went to work with the promise of a pension when they retired. Today, the Biden-Harris Administration has fulfilled that promise,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, chair of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Board of Directors. “Under President Biden’s leadership, the Alaska Ironworkers Pension Plan received Special Financial Assistance to deliver the pensions that these ironworkers have earned.”
Original source can be found here
