The People Who Made Jersey Boys Possible Are Still Waiting for Their Pensions

EvilCorporations.com • U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit, Nos. 24-2791 & 24-3047 • 15 min read

The Non-Financial Ledger

Picture the stagehand who showed up before dawn in Las Vegas to build the set for Jersey Boys. He hauled rigging. He assembled platforms that actors would walk across every night for eight years. He sweated through a hundred convention halls the rest of the week, setting up trade show booths so pharmaceutical companies and tech firms could hawk their products. He did what the gig economy always demands: take every shift you can get, from every employer willing to pay into the same union fund, because that fund is your retirement.

That is not a metaphor. That is the documented reality of how Las Vegas entertainment workers survive. The Nevada Resort Association-IATSE Local 720 Pension Trust covers employees performing both convention work and entertainment work in southern Nevada. There was never a clean line between the two. A stagehand who built the Jersey Boys set on Tuesday might build a convention stage for a trade show on Thursday. That is the structure of the industry. That is the deal.

Now imagine that the pension fund, the institution that was supposed to hold your retirement contributions and protect them, shifted its operations over years toward covering more convention work than entertainment work. Not because you changed. Because Las Vegas’s economy changed. Hotels and venues started booking more conventions. The work shifted beneath the workers’ feet, and the pension fund followed the money.

In 2013, after an internal audit revealed this drift, the pension trust formally amended its own plan documents to declare that it “is not an Entertainment Plan under ERISA.” The workers were not asked. The workers were not warned that this administrative self-reclassification might one day be used in court to deny an employer the legal exemption that keeps withdrawal liability bills from destroying small theatrical producers. The workers were not told that the legal architecture protecting their pension contributions had developed a crack that seven years of litigation would later tear wide open.

When Jersey Boys closed in September 2016, the stagehands lost their steady entertainment gig. Then the trust sent the production company a $913,315 bill. The production company refused to pay, said it qualified for an exemption, and the trust never even bothered to formally respond to the review request before heading to arbitration. The workers whose contributions created this fund are now spectators to a legal war between the fund that holds their retirement savings and the employer who helped fill it. Neither side is them. Both sides claim to be fighting for principle. The workers are waiting.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

Every key fact in this case comes from the court’s own opinion, filed January 6, 2026, in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. These are direct quotes from that record.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health: Financial Insecurity Is a Health Crisis

Pension security is a direct determinant of physical and mental health for working-class Americans. Every dollar of pension liability uncertainty extracts a real cost from real people.

• Workers covered by the Nevada Resort Association-IATSE Local 720 Pension Trust are predominantly gig-adjacent laborers: stagehands, riggers, and technical workers who earn income from multiple short-term projects rather than a single steady employer. For this workforce, the pension trust is often the only structured retirement vehicle they access, making its financial stability a direct health matter.
• The shift from entertainment work to convention work that the trust’s own audit documented is a direct product of Las Vegas’s economic restructuring. Workers did not choose this; venue owners and hotel corporations did. The workers’ retirement security was reshaped by decisions made in corporate boardrooms without their input.
• Years of unresolved litigation generate sustained financial uncertainty for workers. Research consistently documents that pension insecurity is associated with elevated rates of anxiety, depression, delayed medical care, and early mortality among working-class retirees. The decade-plus duration of this dispute is not an abstraction; it is years of workers not knowing what their retirement will look like.
• If the $913,315 withdrawal liability bill is ultimately not collected from JB, the pension fund absorbs that shortfall. Multiemployer pension funds operating with unfunded liabilities spread that burden across all remaining contributing employers and, ultimately, across the workers whose benefits depend on the fund’s solvency.

Economic Inequality: The Architecture of Gig-Economy Retirement Failure

This case is a window into the structural trap that multiemployer pension law creates for the workers it is supposed to protect when industries shift and employers exit.

• The MPPAA’s withdrawal liability system was designed to prevent employers from free-riding: walking away from a pension fund after years of benefiting from the workforce it supports and leaving the remaining employers to carry the unfunded obligation. JB Viva Vegas argues it used the system correctly, contributing for eight years and then exiting because the show closed, not to escape obligations.
• The distinction between “entertainment work” and “convention work” under the MPPAA creates an economic sorting mechanism that tracks class lines precisely. Workers who primarily build sets for Broadway-style theatrical productions are “entertainment employees.” Workers who primarily build those same kinds of sets for pharmaceutical sales conferences are not. The physical labor is identical. The legal status is not.
• Las Vegas hotel and resort corporations drove the shift toward conventions and trade shows by booking more of them. Those corporations are not parties to this lawsuit. The financial consequences of their business decisions land on a pension trust and a theatrical production company while the corporations themselves collect their convention fees and move on.
• Small theatrical producers like JB are the most vulnerable to withdrawal liability because they operate on fixed contracts tied to specific productions. When a show closes, they have no ongoing operations from which to pay a $913,315 penalty. This creates a structural disincentive for small entertainment producers to participate in multiemployer pension plans at all, which ultimately harms the workers whose coverage depends on those contributions.
• The workers who performed convention work that shifted the fund’s classification away from “entertainment” were doing so because convention gigs were available and they needed income. The legal system then used the volume of that convention work against the entertainment exception that protects their theatrical employers. Workers’ economic necessity was converted into a legal instrument used against the very employment structure that funded their pensions.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

Put the $913,315 withdrawal liability bill in context. This is what one small theatrical production’s pension exit cost looks like against the scale of the workers it affected.

What Now?

The Ninth Circuit has set the legal rule. What happens next in this case, and what workers and organizers should be watching.

Key Players

• JB Viva Vegas, LP: The theatrical production company that produced Jersey Boys and initiated this challenge. Represented by Littler Mendelson PC, one of the largest union-busting law firms in the United States.
• Nevada Resort Association-IATSE Local 720 Pension Trust: The multiemployer pension fund administering retirement benefits for Las Vegas entertainment and convention workers. Represented by Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP.
• Circuit Judge Roopali H. Desai: Author of the Ninth Circuit opinion. Her ruling sets binding precedent for the nine-state Ninth Circuit jurisdiction.
• District Judge Jennifer A. Dorsey: Presiding judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, case number 2:19-cv-00499-JAD-VCF. The case returns to her court on remand.

Regulatory Watchlist

• Department of Labor (DOL), Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA): The federal agency responsible for enforcing ERISA and the MPPAA. The trust’s alleged ERISA violation in its 2013 plan amendment is within EBSA’s enforcement jurisdiction.
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC): The federal insurance program for multiemployer pension plans. If the Local 720 Trust faces long-term underfunding due to unresolved withdrawal liability disputes, PBGC is the backstop, and workers should monitor its filings on this fund.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB): While not directly involved here, any future dispute between IATSE Local 720 and employers over pension contribution obligations could trigger NLRB jurisdiction over unfair labor practices.

What Workers and Organizers Should Do

• Request your pension fund’s annual Form 5500 filing: Every multiemployer pension fund must file a Form 5500 with the DOL annually. This document shows funding levels, withdrawal liability assessments, and plan amendments. It is public record. If you are covered by a multiemployer plan, request and read this document.
• Demand transparency on plan reclassifications: The trust in this case reclassified its plan status in 2013 without workers knowing the downstream legal consequences. Workers and union locals should demand advance notice and member input before any plan document amendment that changes the fund’s regulatory classification.
• Support multiemployer pension reform legislation: The Ninth Circuit explicitly noted that if the current law produces results that seem absurd, the remedy lies with Congress, not the courts. Contact your congressional representatives and specifically ask about the status of multiemployer pension solvency legislation.
• Connect with IATSE members across locals: IATSE Local 720’s situation is not unique. Entertainment and convention workers across the country face the same structural tension between gig-based work and pension stability. IATSE’s international structure provides a framework for coordinating across locals to address these systemic issues collectively.
• Build mutual aid within your crew: Given the documented uncertainty of multiemployer pension fund solvency, entertainment workers should build parallel financial support structures through their local networks. Crew mutual aid funds, emergency relief organizations, and union solidarity networks exist and need participation.