Multiemployer Pension Plans Face Uncertain Future

Thomas Nyhan’s job keeps getting tougher. As executive director of the Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, Nyhan is responsible for making sure that 454,000 retired Teamster truck drivers receive their monthly pension checks. Last year, Nyhan paid out a whopping $2.7 billion in benefits due to Central States’ retirees and their beneficiaries. The problem is, with only 65,000 active truck drivers contributing to the pension plan and only $19.1 billion in its coffers — down from a high of $26.8 billion in 2007 — it is just a matter of time before the Rosemount, Illinois–based fund executive can no longer write those checks.

Nyhan说：“这就像海啸从岸边袭来，你可以看到它。”。

但萎缩的资产只能在中央州的一个故事中讲述一半。在集体讨价还价的计划的另一边坐在雇主，大多数小型货运公司 - 终点次数约为2,000 - 以及两个非常大的，YRC全球和ABF货运系统。签署了中央国的货运公司既签署了中央州为其司机提供福利，都是由Cutthroat竞争引起的，主要来自不提供联盟慷慨福利的非极化雇主。升级的养老金捐款威胁要让已经像YRC一样遭受遭受的公司，这一直困扰着自2007年以来破产的边缘。去年8月，在与Teamsters国际兄弟情谊的谈判期间，联盟授予陆上公园，基于堪萨斯州的货运公司18个月的缓刑支付中央州。根据卡车运输行业专家，ABF货运，Arkansas最大的公司最大的单位，已要求类似治疗。

中央州基金并不孤单，以提供退休人员福利。In mid-2009, after the previous year’s devastating market rout, the 385 largest multiemployer pension plans, including Central States, represented an estimated $250 billion in assets, down from $392 billion at the end of 2006, according to the Washington-based National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. But there are also hundreds of smaller plans. In total, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. counts 1,500 multiemployer plans and 10.1 million union member retirees and participants in its insurance program.

事件的毁灭性汇合 - 经济，社会学和监管 - 威胁到数百万工会工人的退休保障，同时为成千上万的雇主创造了金融困难。市场损失，不断增长的失业，工会成员减少，养老金监管，即在哈西顿时代谈判的回收和丰富的福利正在创造一个有效的混合，扼杀了数百个多发主用计划的生存能力，给予联盟赞助的养老基金的名称，也称为塔夫斯特亚博篮球怎么下串-Hartley计划。劳工行业领导人警告说，除非进行了激烈的措施 - 痛苦削减的威胁削减，雇主贡献和立法行动增加 - 占所有界定福利参与者的20％的工会劳动力就是成为A的快速轨道庞大的纳税人负担。

芝加哥大学法学教授理查德·爱泼斯坦（Richard Epstein）说：“2008年的事件打破了安全的假象。”你看到的是2020年的灾难。”

Part of the problem has been the steady decline in union membership. Central States, for example, had 8,000 participating employers in 1980, before industry deregulation passed that year made it easier for nonunion trucking companies to compete. Nyhan says that by the time he took on the role of director in 1985, the fund was already in trouble. Although the bull markets of the 1990s helped the fund offset the loss in contributions as companies left the plan, the bursting of the tech stock bubble in the early 2000s delivered a near-fatal blow. After experiencing a $6 billion drop in total assets as a result of those market losses, operating expenses and benefit payments, the fund saw a further $6 billion eviscerated by the 2008 market meltdown. As it stands today, the Central States plan has almost no hope of funding all of its Teamster members’ defined benefits down the road.

“We’ve been acting in the shoes of the PBGC for the past 30 years,” says Nyhan of his fund’s role providing benefits to retirees whose employers have gone bankrupt. “The plan and the remaining employers can no longer afford it.”

Even as calls mount for public pension reform, the plight of multiemployer pension plans has gone largely unnoticed outside of union halls — in part because union officials and pension executives tend to be even more secretive than hedge fund managers. But the main reason is that there simply isn’t a lot of readily available data about Taft-Hartley plans, because of the large number of very small funds. According to Segal Co., a New York–headquartered consulting firm with deep roots in the union world, “multi” funds range from the tiny, with perhaps 50 to 100 workers and two to four contributing employers in a local plan, to megaplans like the 33-state Central States. The average plan has 1,000 to 5,000 participants and assets of between $100 million and $250 million.

Big or small, most plans have suffered huge losses in assets during the recent financial crisis, and rebuilding them will take a long time. One way to measure pension fund health is by comparing current assets with future liabilities, or the amount of assets needed today to pay retirement benefits sometime down the road. For example, if a plan has 100 percent of the assets needed to pay off its future liabilities, it is said to be fully funded. If a plan has 80 percent of the assets needed for future benefit payments, it is termed 80 percent funded, or 20 percent underfunded. In a September 2009 report, Moody’s Investors Service estimated that the 126 largest multiemployer pension funds were only 56 percent funded. This is equal to a staggering $165 billion in unfunded liabilities.

多雇主基金在重建资产方面面临着独特的挑战。一旦资金不足的计划开始实施2006年《养老金保护法》规定的一系列补救措施——增加雇主供款、削减福利或两者兼而有之——在计划恢复之前，这些措施是无法撤销的。Segal的研究总监朱迪思•马佐（Judith Mazo）去年10月在美国众议院筹款委员会作证时警告称，这种长期、僵化的措施可能威胁到一个行业，并给雇主和参与者造成多年不必要的损失。

MAZO解释说，UNIES渗透在美国的渗透是对多基金的另一个威胁。例如，根据美国货运协会，在1980年的行业放松潜水之前，75％的卡车运输公司都是工会。今天不到25％的是联盟商店。据工党统计局局局称，联盟工人于2009年占所有雇用工资和工资工人的12.3％，下降了1983年的21％。

“The vast majority of liabilities are attributable to employees who aren’t working anymore,” asserts James Dexter, a pension expert in the Princeton, New Jersey, office of consulting firm Mercer.

An influx of new workers is needed to help pay current retiree benefits. In fact, some observers see the necessity of continually bringing new members into multiemployer plans as their biggest flaw. “Multiemployer pension plans are like a pyramid scheme,” says Ken Margolies, director of organizing programs at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, likens multiemployer plans to a “Ponzi scheme” that puts newly unionized workers into an underfunded pension plan. Margolies, who has worked with unions like the Teamsters and the Communications Workers of America, is pro-union, while Furchtgott-Roth, a former chief economist at the Department of Labor, is decidedly not. Still, the point is clear.

芝加哥大学的爱泼斯坦断言：“这是一个正在走下坡路的雪球，阻止它的唯一方法就是把活生生的工人尸体扔到雪球前面。”。

中央州养老基金中，养老基金中不断增长的贡献和员工福利减少的威胁促使联合包裹服务管理，举行大胆。每五年或六年，UPS谈判一个完整的福利板 - 健康和福利，养老金和工资 - 与华盛顿的国际兄弟情谊的大师合同，占地240,000件棕色的驾驶员，他们参加了21个多足大用手计划。2007年国家合同谈判开盘后，本公司决定从陷入困境的中央州购买。“我们意识到，由于新法律[PPA]的适用，因此，由于这种驾驶员以及维持一定程度的金融稳定性，”包装送货公司的发言人诺曼黑（Blow）解释道发言人，养老金水平和福利漫长的中央州最大的雇主，有44,000名参与司机。

But there was a bigger problem. Over two decades, as 6,000 contributing employers exited the Central States plan, UPS management was compelled by multiemployer laws to pick up the pension tab for employees who had never worked a day for the shipping giant. By 2007, UPS had had enough. As part of its negotiations with the Teamsters, the company agreed to pay $6.1 billion to exit the Central States fund. The one-time payment allowed UPS to withdraw all 44,000 employees, while remaining in 20 other Teamster funds.

但61亿美元的暴利很快在市场低迷中化为乌有。”“UPS和投资损失只是严重的，”Nyhan说，他是美国中部各州在80年代初首次聘请的外部诉讼律师，负责起诉因大规模雇主破产而引起的诉讼。1985年，他用诉讼换取了基金管理。

The UPS buyout was unique in its size and scope. “You can buy your way out, but it’s expensive,” says Barbara Bovbjerg, director of education, workforce and income security issues at the Government Accountability Office in Washington. Bovbjerg has started work on updating the GAO’s 2004 report on multiemployer pensions, requested by California Representative George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

大小的雇主正在努力跟上定期缴费支付，与UPS不同，不能支付任何规模的撤销责任。事实上，杰克·亚伯拉罕，芝加哥普华永道的普拉斯豪斯的合作伙伴和合作伙伴说，“大多数小雇主都不知道他们自己有什么。”那些从小型货车公司到FedEx公司等公司巨头，正在推动联盟会员资格。

Dick Herman began driving pneumatic tanker trucks for L.J. Beal & Son out of Jackson, Michigan, in 1972. A careerlong Teamster who turns 64 this month, Herman began the ten-year vesting process to qualify for a pension from Central States that same year, as a member of Local 166. In 1988 he moved to Yellow Freight System (now YRC Worldwide) and transferred his Teamster membership to Local 299, famously Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa’s branch in Detroit. Transferring his Central States pension account took Herman a bit longer than switching his local union affiliation. The former driver, a member of watchdog group Teamsters for a Democratic Union, fought for reciprocity and won. His “30 [years] and out” pension now pays him $3,000 a month. Despite the asset losses to Central States and YRC’s precarious health, Herman, who retired in 2006, is not concerned about his pension. “From what they tell us, ones that are already drawing are set,” he says.

Herman is aware that YRC has ceased paying into the Central States fund. “Guys that are still working, I’m not sure where they’re at,” he acknowledges. “Right now they’re not getting any credit for the time they’re working.”

Plan portability and reciprocity between employers paying into the same plan are two of the key advantages of multiemployer pensions, created especially to benefit workers in construction, trucking and other industries where job changing is endemic. To ensure that Herman and hundreds of thousands of present and future retirees continue to enjoy those benefits, Central States fund director Nyhan has signed on to the NCCMP Multiemployer Plans Coalition to add his voice to pension rescue efforts now under way in Washington.

钣金工人国际协会总裁迈克尔沙利文亦加入联盟。Sullivan于1965年开始职业生涯，作为印第安纳州南方弯道的钣金学徒，为工会致力于他的大部分成年人生活，今天吹嘘了15万人熟练的工艺品。“就这个问题而言，我踩到了字符，”普遍试图避免自1999年的工作以来，他一般试图避免聚光灯。“我们经常在危机时见面。”

最近的危机已从钣金工人的国家养老基金中取出了一块块，其资产从2007年10月的33亿美元下降到2009年3月底的23亿美元，在去年年底返回28亿美元之前。担任基金董事会主席，沙利文一直在全外运动，以保护其联盟工人的养老金福利。毫无疑问，了解他的终身献身于跨国公司是一家家庭事件：他的父亲和叔叔的会员合并总计110多年。去年秋季，沙利文在劳工署福利和养老金福利计划的员工咨询委员会之前作证，迫切需要救出困扰计划。

苏利文和尼汉在新发布的研究报告中,面临极大挑战construction and trucking industries have the most-battered multiemployer pension funds, according to Moody’s. Today there are 75,000 actively employed members and 42,000 retirees and beneficiaries, who receive a combined $33 million a month in benefits from the Sheet Metal Workers’ National Pension Fund, administered since 1995 by Marc LeBlanc, former counsel to the fund. These numbers are typical for the construction industry, where the ratio of active employees to retirees is less than two to one, down from an industry average of four to one 20 years ago.

Sullivan is worried because the Sheet Metal Workers’ plan’s funding ratio plummeted to just 48.9 percent in January owing to shrinking employer contributions and ongoing benefit payments on top of a 27.9 percent portfolio loss in 2008. These problems meant that even though returns recovered substantially last year, it was not enough to lift the fund out of the “red zone.” Plan documents indicate that the well is anticipated to go dry by December 31, 2012. The serious asset deficiency can be traced to the benefit structure implemented between 1966 and 1990, which turned out to be unsustainable, explains LeBlanc. When union membership did not grow as hoped, assets reached a point where contribution income wasn’t enough to fund the benefits. Liabilities assumed from the more than 30 local SMWIA plans that merged into the national fund between 1967 and 1999 exacerbated the problem.

“它给了你大量的资本流入，但在许多情况下，最终并没有成为一个大发薪日，”勒布朗说，他还担任了为期三年的副主席，劳工部的咨询委员会的雇员福利和养老金福利计划。

支付资金的雇主也担心。As with other construction industry union plans, the Sheet Metal Workers’ National Pension Fund is dominated by small-business owners, many of whom are former workers still vested in the national or local funds, according to officials at the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association in Washington. The group’s membership earlier took some corrective steps when it saw problems with funding levels in anticipation of the PPA. “We had plans that contributed to national and local funds,” says Dana Thompson, director of political affairs and assistant director of legislation for the trade group. “Some of our contractors have been hit on two levels.”

Unions have been steadily losing market share, which hurts pension contribution rates and contractor liability. Though employer contributions into the Sheet Metal Workers’ plan were down an estimated 15 percent in 2009 as employment and hours worked dropped, employers still must make up the shortfall. “Contributions to the plan are frankly unaffordable,” says Deborah Wyandt, executive director of labor relations at SMACNA. “It’s putting a hardship on everyone.”

“Employers are on the hook for the unfunded liability,” says Craig Dobbs, institutional consulting director at Graystone Consulting, a unit of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management that runs a manager-of-managers program for the Sheet Metal Workers’ national fund. Dobbs was hired ten years ago to manage the portfolio, now one of about 50 Taft-Hartley plans under his roof. “When you have a plan like the Sheet Metal Workers’, you have a lot of catching up to do,” Dobbs explains. With employment down he is looking to years of superior portfolio performance, and help from Washington, to improve the bottom line. Dobbs figures it will take 12 years with a 7.5 percent annual return assumption to grow assets back to an 80 percent funding level. But fund administrator LeBlanc believes that return assumption is too high. “When I started, our funds were at 6 percent [return assumption], and I felt that could be high,” he says. “When you increase the actuarial assumption — that seems to have been a problem.”

Although the Central States’ and the Sheet Metal Workers’ plans are among the hardest-hit multiemployer funds, many that started 2008 in the “green zone” are now underwater as well. Out in Pasadena, California, the Operating Engineers Funds’ pension portfolio began 2008 in the green zone, at 88 percent funded. Unlike other multi funds, Operating Engineers escaped the downturn in 2001–’02, partly because of its outsize real estate portfolio, explains Michael Graydon, a former Segal consultant who has managed the fund since 2008. Not surprisingly, that portfolio, which accounts for 36 percent of the $1.7 billion pension fund, was down 30 percent for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009. The entire fund was off 25 percent, enough to send it spiraling into the red zone, with a 64 percent funding level. “We’re at the epicenter of the real estate downturn,” says Graydon, whose fund trustees recently hired a new consultant, Cambridge, Massachusetts–based NEPC, to overhaul the asset allocation.

如今，股市已不再被视为病入膏肓的养老基金的灵丹妙药，所有人的目光都投向了华盛顿。来自北达科他州的民主党众议员厄尔·波默罗伊（Earl Pomeroy）与俄亥俄州共和党人帕特里克·提贝里（Patrick Tiberi）共同发起了《保护福利和就业法案》。该法案的重点是免除《养老金保护法》的摊销计划。”PPA强迫你拍摄攻击性的快照，”华盛顿服务雇员国际联盟主信托基金会的执行董事Stephen Abrecht说没人想到股市会暴跌40%。PB&J将允许计划花费更多的时间来为自己提供充分的资金，给雇主更多的现金来储蓄和创造就业机会。2月初，财政部长蒂莫西•盖特纳（timothygeithner）批准了所有固定收益养老金计划的这一想法。

Not everyone is pleased. Many see the constant patches put on ERISA as just so many Band-Aids, not long-term solutions. “The Pomeroy legislation is a good effort, but it’s based on a short-term fix,” says David Blitzstein, director of the negotiated benefits department at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union in Washington. The UFCW covers roughly 800,000 active workers and pays benefits to 400,000 retirees. Unlike their counterparts in the construction trades, most UFCW employers are large publicly traded companies such as supermarket operators Safeway and Kroger Co. Although the Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t require corporations to reveal their multiemployer pension liabilities in their financial statements (as they must with their own corporate plans), Kroger’s 2009 10-K warned shareholders that these liabilities could double in the near term. The 125-year-old Cincinnati-based retailer, which boasts 2,500 stores in 30 states, has seen its multiemployer contributions increase at a rate of 6 percent a year since 2004, to $219 million in 2008.

尽管PB&J的性质是短期的，它要求临时资金救济，但Pomeroy还是全力推进他的法案，这将为多雇主计划提供一些救济。”“多雇主问题更为复杂，”Pomeroy在2月初的一次新闻发布会上对机构投资者表示我们确实为多雇主养老金计划提供了一些规定，“包括计划对资金不足的摊销增加10年。Pomeroy希望在3月31日就PB&J法案进行投票，他认为该法案将提供660亿美元的“资金喘息空间”亚博赞助欧冠

There were two other features in the bill that address multiemployer plans, but they were removed because they’re not quite ready for prime time: plan partition and plan alliances. Plan partition would require the plan to get assistance from the PBGC in the form of a subsidy to help pay partial benefits before the plan reaches the point of “last man standing,” when there are no longer enough employers in an industry to support it.

NCCMP执行董事Randy Defrehn表示，该问题开始对立法者进行一些关注，并开始试图弄清楚需要这种补救措施的计划。当然，它的成本 - 对于初学者而言，PBGC本身是220亿美元的资金，雇主付款可能会增加。Defrehn的联盟还要求将最大的多发性退休人员年度收益增加至20,000美元，从目前的12,870美元增加到20,000美元。

如果德夫雷恩得逞的话，计划联盟也许是未来的解决方案。联盟被认为是一组多个计划为了规模经济而联合在一起的一种方式。但更健康的养老基金担心，与实力较弱的兄弟对峙可能会损害他们的资金状况。”我们正试图找到一种工具，使合并对接收计划更具吸引力。DeFrehn说，联盟将减少对PBGC的压力，更好地为雇主做出贡献，并确保员工福利不会降低到PBGC的水平，他将这一解决方案定义为“双赢”

中央州计划一直在削减福利，即使大型雇主YRC已经停止捐款，至少目前如此。2004年1月1日，计划受托人将参与者应计利润（他们在未来基础上的收入）减少了50%。”对于相同的贡献率，他们得到一半的好处，”尼汉报告。受托人还冻结了诸如提前退休等辅助福利。

“他们是非常昂贵的好处，我们不认为我们能买得起他们了，”尼汉补充道。“这些与会员和联盟有不合缓的举措，但受托人认为这是他们阻止责任蠕变并允许市场回来的责任。”

苏利文正在努力履行工会对家人和同事的养老金承诺，他很高兴德夫雷恩带头拯救多雇主养老金。但沙利文也呼吁停止埃里萨的修补工作，全面改革1974年过时的法律。他设想成立一个总统委员会，“把人们安置在一个房间里，给他们一两年时间来解决这个问题，而不是一次次地解决这个问题。”

沙利文的东西。写有increasingly become a relic of a bygone era, a time when General Motors Corp. and Ma Bell ruled the day and workers expected lifetime employment. Deregulation, oil shocks, global competition, complex financial instruments and a brave new world of technology have changed the employment landscape forever. Now it is time to consider changing how retirement security is meted out, in a way that benefits both employers and employees. Given enough time, a working group of big thinkers, pension industry gurus, employee and employer representatives and voices from all sides of the pension debate just might be able to forge an ERISA 2.0 that would fit the economic reality of the 21st century.

While Capitol Hill has been taken up with the health care bill, pensions have gotten short shrift. But Sullivan is not giving up any time soon. “I’m doing my own thing because I see the necessity for it,” he says. “I just hope some group in Congress will listen.”