Pensions Are Dead? Not For These Iowa Workers

[Omaha Steve]

https://link.iowastartingline.com/view/650843af904f88308d52ecb5nt5zr.a3f/efb08ff4

It's Thursday, May 22, 2025.

Meatpacking workers at JBS plants across the country, including two in Iowa, just ratified a first-ever national contract across all plants.



And they got their pensions back for the first time in 40 years.



Brazil-based JBS, one of the world's largest meatpacking companies, and United Food and Commercial Workers, the union representing 26,000 workers at 14 plants, just ratified a contract that brings back pension plans for workers—which gives workers a defined salary and benefits in retirement—this week.



The contract also adds paid sick leave, which Tyson Foods, a JBS competitor, has been offering since 2021. It also increases average pay by a dollar an hour, paid vacation and bereavement, and adds new plant safety features workers had been demanding.



But the pension plan is something no meatpacking company has offered since 1986, according to the union.



“When I got the news about the pension, I was excited," said Thelma Cruz, a union steward who works at JBS in Marshalltown.



She said she and her husband, who also works at the plant, were excited to stay with the company to watch their pension grow.



“Everything right now is very expensive, and it's hard to save money for retirement, so this gives us security," she added.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Lucky them.

Meanwhile, I'm one whose pension was cut by two-thirds, after my former company declared bankruptcy.

Because I only worked there ten years, I never expected my pension to be anything but a trivial part of my retirement income, unlike those who worked there thirty years or more. For them, that cut by two-thirds has been devastating.