GPO and WEP repealed!
With a win 40 years in the making, a new federal law secures full retirement benefits for educators.
An injustice robbing public employees of hard-earned retirement benefits for the past 40 years has been corrected. On Jan. 5, 2025, President Joe Biden signed into law a full repeal of the federal GPO-WEP laws. This victory came in part through the efforts of MTA and NEA members, who called and visited their elected representatives to encourage them to vote for a repeal that will enable them to retire with the Social Security they rightfully earned.
Following an early-morning approval by the U.S. Senate on Dec. 21, the repeal legislation was delivered to Biden, who signed it at a White House ceremony. The U.S. House had earlier approved the repeal. The Social Security Administration now will determine how to implement the measure. The agency has created a site on its home page for people to obtain updates.
“Over 2.5 million Americans will receive a lump sum payment of thousands of dollars to make up for the shortfall in the benefits they should have gotten in 2024, and they will begin receiving these payments this year,” Biden said. “This victory is the culmination of a forty-year fight to provide security for workers who dedicated their lives to their communities. I am proud to have played a small part in this fight.”
MTA President Max President had the honor of being at the White House for the bill signing.
Page, pictured with Senator Ed Markey, a longtime support of the repeal of the GPO and WEP laws, said: "The 40-year-long steal of well-earned retirement benefits from public servants across the country, including tens of thousands of MTA members, has been repealed! Organizing, advocacy, and persistence by unions across the nation and throughout the NEA made this possible. What a powerful way to start off the new year."
Updates from the Social Security Administration NEA FAQ on Social Security Fairness Act
About GPO and WEP
For far too long, many elected leaders were not well-informed about how these unfair provisions hurt millions of public employees across the nation. Fortunately, educators stepped in with the facts:
- More than 2.8 million public sector employees in 26 states were impacted by GPO and WEP. Educators were affected in 15 of those states (see map), because they pay into their state pension system, but not into Social Security.
- WEP assumed that none of these public employees earn Social Security benefits – which failed to take into account that many educators hold second jobs and summer gigs that require them to pay Social Security taxes. The provision was often devastating to career-changers, who did not receive the full benefit of the years they did pay into Social Security.
- GPO reduced spousal or survivor benefits. More than 70 percent of those affected by GPO lost their entire spousal or survivor benefit.
Some widowed educators received that survivor’s benefit while they were still working. But the minute they retired and started receiving pension payments, they no longer received the benefit that their loved one earned.
From the Archives
Fighting for fairness on Social Security
"There are many, many people out there who are hurt by these provisions" – Retired Medford teacher Margaret "Peggy" Kane told the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy in November, 2007
The effort to repeal the GPO and WEP provisions – two federal provisions that undermined the retirement security of educators and others for years – is not new. MTA and NEA members have been fighting for the Social Security Fairness Act for years and years. In 2007, retired Medford teacher Margaret "Peggy" Kane shared her story with MTA Today. Kane, who died in 2019, was a widow who was unable to collect survivor benefits because of the GPO, which reduces the amount of Social Security benefits paid to a spouse or survivor by an amount equal to two-thirds of the individual's pension.
“People are shocked when they discover at retirement age, when it is too late, that Social Security is not going to be available to them,” Kane said. “For many, the loss of these benefits can mean the difference between poverty and self-sufficiency.”
In November of 2007, Kane testified in Washington, D.C., before the Senate Subcommittee on Social Security, Pensions and Family Policy, which was chaired by then-Senator John F. Kerry (D-Mass.). She urged the committee to support the Social Security Fairness Act of 2007.
Seventeen years after Kane testified – and 40 years after the fight to repeal these two provisions began – the Social Security Fairness Act is now law.
Read the full story from the December 2007/January 2008 MTA Today edition.
President Biden Signs the Social Security Fairness Act
The White House
