Meat Cutters Union Local No. 88 & Food Employers Allied Industry Pension Plan

The plan is governed by a joint board of trustees, as required by the Taft-Hartley Act. Trustees are appointed equally by the union — historically Amalgamated Meat Cutters Local 88, now part of the UFCW — and by the participating food-industry employers. This split governance means investment policy must achieve consensus between labor and management representatives.

The Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union, which originally sponsored Local 88, merged into the UFCW in 1979. However, many local pension plans, including this Earth City-based plan, maintained their separate legal and fiduciary identities. The plan is affiliated with the UFCW's network of local pension funds but is not directly administered by the International.

As of mid-2026, the plan has not been identified publicly as being in critical or declining status requiring benefit suspensions under MPRA, nor has it appeared among the multiemployer plans receiving special financial assistance under the American Rescue Plan Act's Butch Lewis provisions. This suggests the trustees have maintained the plan above the acute distress threshold, though detailed funded-ratio data is not publicly disclosed.

The fund deploys a standard institutional pension mix: domestic equities, investment-grade fixed income, real estate, and limited private-market allocations. Investment management is outsourced to external managers selected by the trustees, typically with the advice of an institutional investment consultant. Direct co-investments and independently sourced private deals are not characteristic of this plan.

Manager selection is typically conducted through the plan's investment consultant, which screens strategies and makes recommendations to the trustees. Cold outreach directly to the union hall or employer trustees is uncommon. Interested managers should identify the plan's consultant of record — a relationship that changes periodically and is not publicly posted — through standard Form 5500 filings.