克利夫兰的铁工工会地方退休金计划将获得4890万美元的联邦现金注入，以防止预计的2024年破产，这将影响约3,000名退休人员和活跃工人的利益。

Benefits had been cut an average of about 30% across the board in unionLocal 17in 2017 under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 that was created to aid pension funds in danger of running out of money.

The new financial relief was created under the federal American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9-trillion package enacted last year to aid U.S. recovery from economic and health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides an estimated $94 billion in assistance to eligible plans.

The law calls for the federalPension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC). which pays benefits to multiemployer plans that fail, to pay a lump sum sufficient for a plan to continue benefits through 2051.

根据PBGC网站，截至5月23日，已批准了其他20个养老金计划。它们包括其他与建筑有关的计划，例如瓦工和盟军工匠当地5纽约退休基金退休金计划；休斯顿的水泥泥工联盟地方681退休金计划；以及宾夕法尼亚州东部养老金基金的木匠工业委员会。

Eric Dean, president of theInternational Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and Reinforcing Iron Workers, said the relief is the first of its kind for an ironworkers’ pension plan.

He attributes the financial woes of Local 17 in part to a downturn in the industrial economy. “When you get a major steel factory closure, it’s like removing a piston from an engine,” Dean said. “All of a sudden you run with one less piston, and it puts downward pressure on the pension plan.”

Ironworker members now work more in infrastructure and other construction than they did previously. Dean said. “Infrastructure and commercial construction have taken the place of what used to be a very large industrial sector, which had been a good core of their work,” he added.

据总体上影响多雇主养老金计划的其他因素包括在大规模衰退期间的雇主退出系统和资产损失中的下降。American Academy of Actuaries.

In addition to restoring retirees’ full benefits, the financial assistance will make them whole for benefit cuts since 2017.

Dean said it also will make the plan solvent, protect the benefits of active workers and bolster PBGC and businesses. He said businesses in multiemployer pensions funds would have had to write major checks if the PBGC had collapsed. “There are people who view it as a union bailout. But, quite frankly, it’s a business bailout too," Dean said.

Rich Jordan, Local 17 business manager and financial secretary, declined to discuss specifics of the financial assistance other than to say “I am very happy for retirees to get this money back."