Source: United States Senator for Ohio Sherrod Brown
Expansion is a Direct Result of the Pension Fix and will Create 40 New Union Jobs
BRYAN, OH – In Case You Missed It: A Toledo Blade article highlighted U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) visit with leaders from the Spangler Candy Company, Teamsters Local 20, and Spangler employees, who are represented by Teamsters Local 20, to discuss pension relief he helped secure in the American Rescue Plan. For years, Brown led efforts to secure these pensions for Ohioans, touring the state to stand with Ohio retirees and workers, and co-chairing a Congressional Committee on the pension crisis in 2018. Those efforts led to Brown’s Butch Lewis Act being included in the American Rescue Plan. The multiemployer pension fix saved Spangler $200,000 per employee, and allowed the company to expand its operations, adding production of Bit-O-Honey to the Bryan facility. The expansion is a direct result of the pension fix and will create 40 new union jobs.
“Mr. Brown came to Spangler to celebrate the Butch Lewis Act, a years-long effort that secured thirty years of pension payments for workers and retirees participating in endangered multiemployer pension plans, including Spangler employees whom Mr. Brown credits with raising his awareness of the pension crisis,” wrote Jordan Fitzgerald for the Toledo Blade.
“The expansion will create 40 jobs, and though new employees will not don their uniforms until the opening, Spangler is already hiring and training their new class of candy makers,” Fitzgerald continued.
The Butch Lewis Act, named in memory of Butch Lewis, the former retired head of Teamsters Local 100 in southwest Ohio, secured retirement benefits for workers and retirees in endangered pension plans for 30 years—with no cuts to benefits. Brown worked for years alongside Rita Lewis, Butch’s widow, who continued her late husband’s fight for the retirement security these workers earned over a lifetime of hard work.
Brown’s Butch-Lewis Act helped to:
- Keep multiemployer pension plans solvent and well-funded for thirty years—with no cuts to earned benefits of participants and beneficiaries;
- Restore full benefits for retirees in plans that previously had to take cuts and increase the maximum Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) insurance amount; and
- Require each plan that receives assistance file regular status reports with the PBGC and Congressional Committees, in order to prevent recurrence and to protect retirees’ benefits.
Read The Toledo Blade’s full article HERE or below:
The Sweet Life: Sen. Brown speaks at Spangler, secures pensions for Ohio retirees
By Jordan Fitzgerald
July, 1, 2021
BRYAN — When the wind blows northwest, all of Bryan smells like candy, and the town’s residents try and guess which flavor of Dum Dums the Spangler Candy Factory is cracking out that day. The sweet aroma intensifies the closer one gets to the facility on North Portland Street where Sen. Sherrod Brown held a news conference Thursday morning.
Mr. Brown came to Spangler to celebrate the Butch Lewis Act, a years-long effort that secured thirty years of pension payments for workers and retirees participating in endangered multiemployer pension plans, including Spangler employees whom Mr. Brown credits with raising his awareness of the pension crisis.
“This is important for Bryan, for Toledo, for all over this country,” Mr. Brown said, flanked by Spangler’s flagship Dum Dums, Circus Peanuts, and new-acquisition Bit-O-Honey. “There were more than a million families who were about to lose 20, 30, 50 percent of their pensions.”
The situation at Spangler was more dire. Spangler employees, who have been represented by International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 20 for over 50 years, paid into the Central States Pension Fund in 1972. In 1980, 11,000 companies participated in the fund, but only 1,000 are left. Due to “last man standing” rules passed in the eighties, those remaining — like Spangler who paid its dues totally and timely — remained liable for delivering pensions to every worker in Central States, even those who never labored for their companies.
With so many retirees and so few firms paying into the pension plan, the system — which Spangler CEO Kirk Vashaw called “fundamentally unfair” — grew unsustainable.
Spangler’s president, Bill Martin, said that “in 2024, the plan was projected to go insolvent and fail. All of our retirees who worked here at Spangler and in Central States would’ve had their pensions cut by 90 percent.”
By December 2020, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, the national, government-chartered corporation tasked with maintaining private pension plans, had $66 billion in liabilities and only $3 billion in assets according to its annual report. The report projected that multiemployer pension program would run out by 2026.
On a day Mr. Brown called “the best day of [his] political career,” the Senate voted 51-50 to pass the Butch Lewis Act, and President Biden signed it into law in March as part of the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus relief package that Democrats eked through Congress.
On what he said was his third or fourth visit to Spangler’s Candyland, the senator shook hands with staff in the break room, strolled through the factory, and orated in front of the building’s main entrance before heading to a housing roundtable in Defiance and an infrastructure meeting in Fremont Thursday afternoon. Spangler Candy Company and the Teamsters Union played an integral role in drumming up support for the law, which takes its name from Butch Lewis, the former head of Teamsters Local 100 in Hamilton County, Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Brown pursued pension relief for years. He and Sen. Robert Portman co-chaired a joint select committee on pensions in 2018, but Mr. Portman ultimately followed the Republican party line and voted against the Butch Lewis Act earlier this year. Despite the switch, protection for retirees seems to remain a focus of Mr. Portman, who joined Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) to introduce the Retirement Security and Savings Act in May.
Although they disagree on many issues, Mr. Brown called his relationship with Mr. Portman, who will not seek reelection in next year’s midterms, “productive.”
“I hope whoever wins the primary or the general will have the same working relationship with me as Senator Portman,” Mr. Brown said, though he did not say if he preferred a candidate to replace his colleague whom he said he spoke with that morning.
Unlike the Buckeye State’s junior senator, Mr. Brown, who assumed the role of co-chair for the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions, and Family Policy in February, said he intends to run for a fourth term in 2024, though he has not made a formal announcement.
Now that the Butch Lewis Act has taken effect, over a million retirees and workers can enjoy their retirement without fretting over financial security. Many Spangler workers have spun sugar for over 25 years — the company even has reserved parking for those who served the company for a half-century — and Spangler’s director of corporate communications Diana Exchhofen said at least a half dozen have hung up their hair nets since March.
Roberta Dell, Local 20’s former chief union steward at Spangler, worked there for 49 years before retiring March 31, just 20 days after President Biden scribbled his signature onto the legislation. Her husband, another Spangler candyman, died before they could retire together.
“I walked out the door for the last time because of every person here,” Mrs. Dell remarked at a lectern bearing the Spangler logo. “Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Someday, now you can all retire.”
Mrs. Dell passes her days doing crafts and spending time with her grandchildren, the youngest of whom was born just a few weeks ago. Spangler, too, has big plans following Butch Lewis.
Spangler acquired Bit-O-Honey from Pearson’s Candy Co. of St. Paul last November, and they plan on constructing the classic candies at Spangler West Campus, a 300,000 square foot facility six blocks from downtown Bryan that will be complete in 2022.
The expansion will create 40 jobs, and though new employees will not don their uniforms until the opening, Spangler is already hiring and training their new class of candy makers.
Mr. Vashaw and Mr. Martin emphasized that Spangler’s growth is contingent on the Butch Lewis Act. Now that the company is no longer responsible for all Central States pensions, they can reallocate funds toward internal improvement.
“If there were still the pension issue, we wouldn’t be expanding,” Mr. Martin confessed.
Bryan’s mayor Carrie Schlade said she is “so grateful” for all that Mr. Brown and Spangler Candy have done for her community.
Mr. Vashaw refuted common conceptions of a divide between labor and business interests.
“If you want to support labor you need pro-business policies,” he said. “And if you want to support businesses you need pro-labor policies.”
“We provide our consumers with a small treat in a world that could use more treats,” Mr. Vashaw announced to a crowd of media reps, senatorial staff, and Spangler employees, but for retirees in northwest Ohio and across the country, a secure retirement is the sweetest treat of all.
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