Victory for workers

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is more than just a response to the coronavirus. It’s also one of the largest anti-poverty measures in US history.

Provisions in the package, like expanding the Child Tax Credit alone, will bring nearly 4 million kids out of poverty, cutting child poverty nearly in half. Combined with $1,400 relief payments, $300 in extra unemployment insurance, and other provisions, the Urban Institute estimates the package will reduce poverty in this country by over a third.

And, of course, the package will speed vaccine distribution, hopefully bringing this pandemic to an end. All of this is good news after a year of devastation.

Some of the package’s most impactful changes barely even made headlines.

One of the more under-the-radar victories is that more than a million union workers and retirees can expect to see their troubled pensions rescued. The relief package sets aside $86 billion in direct aid for approximately 200 pension programs that are at risk of running out of funds.

This investment would provide swift, targeted relief to national multiemployer pension plans like the Teamsters Central States plan, which represents 400,000 participants in Ohio, Michigan, and other Midwestern states. With a current deficit of more than $20 billion, the fund is projected to go broke in 2025, leaving current and future retirees without benefits.

"For more than two decades, Teamster members, retirees, and officials have worked tirelessly to make sure the hard-earned retirements of its members are protected," International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said in a statement.

"Now, as part of this bill," he said, "more than 50 Teamster pension plans – including its largest, the Central States Pension Fund – will be eligible for assistance at the outset of the bill’s enactment, with more of the union’s plans becoming eligible in 2022."

Multiemployer pension plans are negotiated between unions and employers in fields where there is a lot of turnover among workers, like construction and mining. Other industries including retail, transportation, food processing, and trucking also negotiate multiemployer pension plans, meaning the impact of this $86 billion in aid will have a wide-ranging impact on workers across multiple sectors.

As industries change and Republicans in Congress and state legislatures have pushed deregulation and right-to-work laws, union membership has been on a steady decline, starving pension plans. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, union workers, businesses, and retirees faced a crisis and were in dire need of support.

Excerpted: ‘Biden's American Rescue Plan Is a Huge Victory for Workers’

Commondreams.org