Meat Cutters Union Local No. 88 and Food Employers Allied Industry Pension Trust

Meat Cutters Union Local No. 88 and Food Employers Allied Industry Pension Trust

The Meat Cutters Union Local No. 88 and Food Employers Allied Industry Pension Trust is a multi-employer Taft-Hartley defined-benefit plan headquartered in Earth City, Missouri. The plan, which serves members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union and participating food-industry employers, has been designated a frozen plan — meaning no new benefit accruals are credited to participants. This structural freeze shifts the trust's primary obligation from growth to liability matching, focusing investment attention on capital preservation and the management of existing benefit commitments. The trust's disclosed investment strategy reflects a single-minded concentration on private equity secondaries. This approach involves purchasing existing limited partner interests in private equity funds from sellers seeking liquidity, rather than making primary commitments to newly formed funds. Such a strategy typically offers earlier cash-flow visibility and reduced blind-pool risk, aligning with the frozen plan's need to fund near- and intermediate-term benefit payments without speculative exposure. Known geographic exposure is concentrated in North American middle-market buyout and growth-equity fund stakes. The fund is administered from a single location in the St. Louis suburb of Earth City. As a managed retirement plan without a publicly advertised investment staff directory, specific decision-makers and contractor relationships remain opaque. Adjacent vehicles, operating businesses, and philanthropic arms are not publicly noted in relation to this entity. The trust's most notable structural feature is its frozen status, a governance decision that effectively transformed the plan from an active retirement-benefit provider into a dedicated liability-matching vehicle. Structurally, the trust's frozen status is the primary differentiator. Unlike open Taft-Hartley plans that continue to accept new contributions and accrue benefits — and thus can afford longer-duration, higher-risk asset programs — this plan operates as a runoff portfolio. Every investment decision is made in the shadow of a fixed, declining participant base. The singular focus on secondaries reflects a mandate optimized for portfolio transparency, liquidity timing, and the explicit trade-off between growth and capital preservation that frozen plans must navigate.