Peco’s new contract gives all workers pensions — but not the kind you might think

When IBEW Local 614 and Peco started negotiating a new contract earlier this year for call center employees, linemen, and other field workers, one thing was clear to local union president Larry Anastasi: He needed to get pensions back for all of his members. Roughly 600 of his 1,500 members, hired since 2021, weren’t offered a pension. The rest had differing plans. Clawing back pensions for the whole union wouldn’t just be a reversal of Peco’s trajectory. It would buck a cross-industry trend.“The trend my entire career, which is now more than 40 years in this business, has been employers want to get away from defined benefit plans, and unions want to maintain them and get them in more places,” said Wendell Young IV, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represen