Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies · Minor

Have PBGC use its authority against underfunded multiemployer plans

Not started

610 18. Department of Labor and Related Agencies

“The PBGC should use existing statutory authority to protect workers, retirees, employers, and taxpayers by closely monitoring and taking appropriate remedial action with regard to badly run and underfunded multiemployer union pension plans, including termination where appropriate.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has not used its existing authority against badly run or underfunded multiemployer plans, and has terminated none. Its multiemployer activity in the window is the Special Financial Assistance program, which pays money into troubled plans; the Corporation proposed technical amendments to it on 2026-06-16 and its other rulemakings in the window are single-employer valuation and interest-assumption updates. The Corporation's press record was enumerated on 2026-09-06 and closes the gap the Federal Register left: the twelve releases from 2025-01-20 to date are the FY2024 Projections Report and the FY2025 Annual Report (both 2026-01-27), a director sworn in (2025-11-06), an advocate selected, three compliance-assistance launches (the Opinion Letter Program relaunch 2026-03-17, the Amicus Curiae Program 2026-05-07, the Coverage Assessment Program 2026-08-10), a QDRO practical guide, FAQs for mergers of plans that have received Special Financial Assistance (2026-05-13), and two First Brands single-employer trusteeships. Nothing terminates or takes remedial action against a multiemployer plan. The nearest thing to enforcement is the Corporation's first amicus brief, filed 2026-06-05 in the Seventh Circuit in *Consumers Concrete Corp. v. Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund* — appearing in someone else's withdrawal-liability litigation, not using § 4042 or § 4231 against an underfunded plan.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Negative search: chapter log, Cluster negative search — the PBGC asks (#1682, #1683, #1684).
  • PBGC’s whole Federal Register output for the window was enumerated from the corpus: eleven documents, of which nine are the recurring single-employer interest-assumption and asset- allocation updates, one is the Miscellaneous Corrections rule of 2025-08-15 and one is the Special Financial Assistance proposal above. None is an enforcement or termination action.
  • Corrected 2026-09-06 (read-queue ticket 07). The press index is not missing, the path was wrong: pbgc.gov/news/press-releases 404s and pbgc.gov/news/press is the index, a single server-rendered page with the full release text back to 2022 and an “All / All except SFA Approvals / SFA Approvals only” filter. (pbgc.gov/sitemap.xml is also live, a four-page index.) Every in-window release was read; the list is in the Status note. An unannounced enforcement action can no longer be inferred from a gap in the newsroom, because there is no gap.
Action
other
Object
PBGC oversight of multiemployer pension plans
ID
1683