The AFL-CIO’s pension panel has roundly condemned proposals made by two leading Senate Republicans to shore up the nation’s endangered multiemployer pension funds that would cut benefits by up to 19%. The federation’s Retirement Security Working Group said Dec. 2 that the proposals contained in a white paper released Nov. 20 by Finance Committee chair Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee “will not only injure the retirees and [...]

This study analyzes data on specific private sector pension plans (referred to as “multiemployer plans”) to assess the overall national economic impact of benefits paid by these plans to retirees. We estimate the employment, output, value added, and tax impacts of pension benefit expenditures from multiemployer plans at the national level, and find that the economic gains attributable to private sector multiemployer DB pension expenditures are considerable. In 2016, $41.8 billion in pension benefits were paid to 3.5 million [...]