Ironworkers pension plan gets $75.8M assistance

The troubled Baltimore-based pension plan of Ironworkers Local 16 will receive $75.8 million in special assistance to restore benefits, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The plan covers 996 people in the construction industry, mostly in the Baltimore

region.

The funds were approved by the federal pension insurance agency from a program enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion Biden administration-backed bill approved by Congress in 2021 that was tied to pandemic relief.

The program was created to aid severely underfunded multi-employer pension plans.

“These are hardworking individuals,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, during a White House video call Wednesday announcing the funding.

“We’re protecting American workers as we should.”

According to a PBGC release, the Ironworkers Local 16 Plan suspended benefits in 2018 “to address the plan’s troubled financial condition at that time and its projected insolvency.”

Benefits to about 680 people were cut, the agency said. It said that, on average, affected participants’ benefits were reduced 25%.

The agency says it has approved about $53.1 billion in special financial aid nationwide so far to plans covering more than 764,000 workers, retirees and beneficiaries.

In 2017 Baltimore-based Ironworkers Local 16 merged with two Washington-area locals, including Ironworkers Local 5, following years of declining membership and work, and difficulty funding its pension.

“This will change their lives in a way that obviously you and I and other people couldn’t understand,” said Ray Cleland, co-chair of the Board of Trustees of the Ironworkers Local 16 Pension Fund and president of Local 5, during the funding news conference.

“When you lose that type of money — 25 percent out of your pension — it’s drastic changes you have to make in your life.”