Peco Contract Restores Pensions to 1,500 Union Workers After 3-Day Strike

3 articles · Updated · The Philadelphia Inquirer · Jul 29

Peco’s new labor contract extends a pension to all 1,500 IBEW Local 614 members, ending a gap that left about 600 workers hired since 2021 without one.
The deal uses a cash-balance plan rather than a traditional defined-benefit pension, giving workers an employer-funded retirement balance that builds over a career without required employee contributions.
That structure emerged after a three-day strike in early July, as the union pushed to restore pensions for all members and Peco argued it had to keep service affordable under utility rate regulation.
The agreement runs against a long retreat from traditional pensions: just 1% of private-sector workers had them in 2022, while cash-balance plans grew to about 23,000 employers in 2020 from 1,477 in 2001.
For Peco, the contract also marks another step in a retirement shift that began in 2001, when roughly 80% of employees moved to a cash-balance plan and others kept older pensions.