UFCW Union Local No.655, FOOD Employers' Joint Pension Plan

UFCW Union Local No.655, FOOD Employers' Joint Pension Plan

The UFCW Union Local No.655, FOOD Employers' Joint Pension Plan was established in 1963 to provide retirement and disability benefits for members of a retail and food manufacturing local that has grown from 450 workers in 1934 to over 10,000 today. President Laura Kelley inherited a fund built on a bedrock of major Midwestern grocery employers, with Schnuck Markets and Dierbergs Markets as the two dominant contributing entities. The plan operates from Ballwin, Missouri, as a classic Taft-Hartley multiemployer defined-benefit plan — one of a shrinking cohort — where collective bargaining between the union and a group of employers yields the continuous stream of contributions that funds its liabilities. The plan’s investment posture is far more eclectic than a typical pension’s glide path. Strategies span buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, secondaries, special situations, and a full venture continuum from seed to growth. The entity also allocates directly to real estate, holds a portfolio of marketable securities, and participates in co-investments. The geographic heart of the fund’s real assets stays in Missouri, where it owns the Local 655 union hall and a separate investment property, while the marketable and private equity books reach nationally. Team reach and adjacent structures reflect an embedded community of labor-focused capital. The plan is connected to broader worker-rights networks through memberships in the Missouri AFL-CIO and Missouri Jobs With Justice, while the local itself maintains internal affinities through OUTreach, UFCW’s 2SLGBTQ+ constituency group. The UFCW Charity Foundation provides a separate philanthropic conduit for the union family. Recent visible activity has centered on the labor side that feeds the pension: in 2024, Local 655 ratified new multi-year contracts with both Schnucks and Dierbergs, a dual ratification that secures what the plan’s funded status relies on most — predictable future contributions from its core partners. Structurally, the plan sits at the intersection of a labor union and a joint employer group, a governance model increasingly scarce as corporate 401(k)s have absorbed the private-sector retirement market. This gives it a distinct asset-liability profile: a relatively mature, contribution-based in-flow matched to legacy defined-benefit outflows, which in turn supports the kind of broad, patient, all-weather allocation that a single-family office pursues, but with the fiduciary guardrails of ERISA.