养老金福利担保公司值得支撑吗？

Terry O’Sullivan has a problem. General president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, O’Sullivan thinks the half-million union members he represents at $35 billion LIUNA are headed for disaster. That’s because, as insured members of the养老金福利担保公司，他们正在进行一个强制性计划，以523亿美元的赤字。

The PBGC, the Washington-headquartered federal insurance agency that provides modest replacement income for multiemployer pension participants whose defined benefit pensions have become insolvent, estimates that unless changes are made, it will run out of money by 2025. Last year, in an attempt to prop up the PBGC, Congress doubled annual premiums for the agency’s 10.4 million multiemployer participants, from $13 per person to $26; it will probably keep hiking them for the foreseeable future. (The PBGC has no official comment on its plans.)

“我们不享受溢价增加，我们相信注定要注定，”基于华盛顿的O'Sullivan说。“我们认为国会将鲁莽地增加保费。”

But it’s more than a premium rise that is nettling O’Sullivan. He wants a wholesale exit from the PBGC and asserts that his union can take care of participants who fall victim to employer bankruptcies without help from the troubled federal agency. Multiemployer pensions have long disagreed about mandatory PBGC participation. “It’s always been a debate,” says Randy DeFrehn, executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP) in Washington.

消费者倡导群体如aarp和Pension Rights Centerhave been calling for a taxpayer bailout of severely underfunded multiemployer pensions, along the lines of the financial and auto industry rescues after the 2008–’09 global financial meltdown. But Congress has no appetite for such an answer to an impending retirement crisis affecting middle class workers. As a result, the union world has been left to craft its own solutions.

当PBGC作为Erisa的一部分形成时，综合养老金立法于20世纪70年代中期颁布，许多多发性官员不想加入其保险计划。他们的计划，其中有一个平等的联合和雇主受托人，已经有办法处理雇主破产：通过将受影响的工人留在养老金中支付受影响的工人的福利。官员们还浏览了PBGC，因为我们铭记了单雇主计划。

强制性PBGC包含在暂停中持有，直到20世纪70年代后期的一项研究得出了多发性养老金所要求的代理人在当时不太可能发生的事件中需要安全网。国会通过1980年的多发间养老金计划修正案法案呼吸多用机计划进入保险公司。

从1980年到2003年担保multiemployer公关ogram was fully solvent. That started to change after the dot-com bubble burst, and worsened in the wake of the financial crisis. Congress began raising premiums to reduce the growing deficit. The Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA) sought to prevent seriously troubled plans, those calculated to become insolvent within 20 years, from folding. In a controversial move, the MPRA gave multiemployer plan trustees the power to reduce participant benefits despite the fact that ERISA forbids such cuts.

在2014财年期间的多发间计划中，PBGC为53项养老金计划支付了9700万美元的财政援助，涵盖了52,000名退休人员的福利。在这些计划中还有23,000人在退休时会收到福利。

并非每一个多发主用计划官员都在寻求与PBGC联系。Charles Storke，加利福尼亚州的领导律师Teamsters Pension Trust（WCTPT）的西部大会, has ongoing discussions with Congress and the agency. “The question is, how much more do they need to be effective without putting pressure on the system and, in particular, the plans that are not as strong as Western Conference?” says Storke, a partner with San Francisco law firm Trucker Huss, of premium increases. “We don’t relish seeing those premiums double or even triple.”

斯塔克认为，这些费用是属于多发间养老金社区的价格。550,000名参与者分布在13个州，WCTPT去年加入了PBGC $ 1430万美元。在357亿美元的资产中，即使需要，基于良好的San Ramon的计划对于PBGC救助而言，即使是必要的，也是如此，即使是必要的，斯塔克笔记也是如此。但是，令人加注方认为该机构可以帮助较小的养老金基金，因为它恢复完全资助的地位。“我们宁愿与国会和监管机构合作，并找到解决这个极难问题的解决方案，”斯特克说。

LIUNA’s O’Sullivan sees an opening to a PBGC exit with Congress’s potential enactment of a new pension model. This plan design originated in a February 2013 report called “Solutions Not Bailouts,” by the NCCMP’s Retirement Security Review Commission. The report, assembled by 40 multiemployer stakeholders, also included a recommendation that resulted in the MPRA legislation allowing benefit reductions for participants in plans nearing insolvency. The NCCMP’s proposed pension model wouldn’t require PBGC insurance. Dubbed the Composite Plan, it would be a hybrid of defined benefit and defined contribution, a voluntary retirement savings and income delivery framework that multiemployer pensions could adopt individually after negotiating at the union-employer level. The legacy pension would continue to receive some new assets, while the rest would flow into the new plan.

The NCCMP’s DeFrehn, who expects a draft bill from Congress this spring, points out that a 21st-century pension plan would make union membership more attractive to employers and employees. “There’s got to be a different way,” O’Sullivan says, calling for what he describes as tools, time and flexibility: “We have to reinvent how we provide retirement security.”

Follow Frances Denmark on Twitter at@Francesdenmark..