Single-Employer and Multiemployer Pension Plans: Problems and Prognosis

Abstract

This article examines the state of single-employer and multiemployer pension plans for the period 1980s to 2020 with particular attention to funding, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation benefit guarantees and intervention procedures, financial status, participant experience, employer premiums, and benefit payments. It then shifts to congressional efforts to save the plans beginning with the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 and continuing through the complex development of the HEROES Act with its conflicting EPPRA and GROW Act provisions. Due to an unresolved conflict between the Senate Republicans and the House Democrats, the pension provisions were removed from the compromise legislation that was signed into law at the very end of the Trump Administration. The matter will be further addressed by the new Democratic-controlled Congress and the Biden/Harris Administration. However, that may take a while. The issues are complicated and the Congress may be busy with more pressing matters for some time to come.