NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS |
...Pension reform
CONSTRUCTION:
Not just for boys
Girls-only after-school Construction Clubs have
begun cropping up in Portland high schools, under
a project of non-profit Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.
known as Building Girls. The group’s mission is
to increase the participation of women in high-
wage high-skill building, mechanical, electrical,
utility, and highway construction trades careers.
The clubs, led by volunteer tradeswomen, meet
weekly. Participants get pizza, cookies, and hands-
on lessons on how to safely use power tools. The
first club drew a dozen girls at Wilson High
School for 12 weeks starting in October. The girls
also visited a furniture maker, and made wooden
toys which they donated to Raphael House, a shel-
ter for victims of domestic violence.
The second club began Jan. 27 at Benson High
School and will run eight weeks. Building Girls
program manager Katie Yablonski is in talks with
several other Portland-area high schools about ex-
panding the program.
“The intent is to get young women interested
in work they may have seen as something just for
the boys,” says Oregon Tradeswomen communi-
cations manager Mary Ann Naylor.
Building Girls is also offering a summer day
camp for middle school and high school girls, and
a four-week work crew for girls and young
women 17 to 24 years old who are interested in a
career in construction, in which they earn a small
February 6, 2015 | PAGE 9
Adit, a student at Wilson High School, learns from Build-
ing Girls volunteer Kaeli Casati, an employee of residen-
tial remodeling firm Environs. (Photo by Katie Yablonski,
courtesy of Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.)
stipend while learning basic construction skills
and visiting apprenticeship training centers.
Naylor said the Building Girls program will
serve more than 1,600 girls this year.
ONLINE EXTRA
To find out more, or to apply online for the girls summer day
camp, visit http://www.tradeswomen.net/building-girls/
From Page 8
the same time that members
were thrown out of work in the
downturn, meaning fewer em-
ployers were contributing to
make up the losses. Other union
plans are suffering from long-
term declines in union employ-
ment in their industries, which
have made the plans top-heavy:
They may have more retirees
collecting benefits than active
workers bringing in contribu-
tions.
Though many multiemployer
plans are considered under-
funded, most are expected to re-
cover, and only a small fraction
are projected to become insol-
vent — maybe 100 out of about
1,500 multiemployer pension
plans total. It’s those failing
plans, which account for over a
million workers and retirees,
which might make use of the
new law to cut benefits if that
can prevent insolvency.
Before the law passed in De-
cember, failing plans were re-
quired to spend down their as-
sets paying current retirees
every dollar they were prom-
ised. The plans would then get
money from the PBGC to pay
retirees under a reduced benefit
formula. The formula guaran-
tees 100 percent of the first $11
(per year of service) of a partic-
ipant’s monthly benefit rate,
plus 75 percent of the next $33.
That’s the formula that gener-
ates the $1,072.50 monthly
maximum for a worker who re-
tires after 30 years of service.
To shore up multiemployer
pension plans, the new law
makes other changes besides al-
lowing benefit cuts. It doubles
the insurance premium plans
pay to the PBGC (to $26 per
member per year). And it makes
it easier for plans to merge with
other plans. It also allows plans
to divide, carving out “or-
phaned” participants (workers
whose employer went bankrupt
or left the plan) into plans that
would fail and then get the in-
surance benefit, rather than tak-
ing down the whole plan.
But Friedman, the Pension
Rights Center director, says
there were other solutions be-
sides cutting promised benefits.
For instance, Congress could
have increased the PBGC pre-
mium much more, say to $120
per member per year, to prepare
for a wave of defaults. She said
her organization will try to re-
peal the new law.
NCCMP, for its part, will
push Congress to enact another
part of its Solutions Not Bail-
outs proposal: allowing a new
kind of hybrid retirement plan
that would combine the guaran-
tees of the traditional defined
benefit pension with the reduced
employer investment risk of the
newer defined contribution pen-
sion plans commonly known as
401(k)s. NCCMP’s proposed
“target benefit” plan would
guarantee a minimum benefit
based on conservative assump-
tions about investment return,
while aiming for returns that
would provide benefits above
that amount.