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July 3, 2015 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
Summer Institute for Women comes to Portland
From June 23 to 27, Reed College’s tranquil
summertime campus was once again the site
of a summit for union women from around
the Western United States and Canada. The
Western Region Summer Institute for Union
Women is an annual event that rotates be-
tween British Columbia, Washington, Oregon,
and northern and southern California. It
comes to Portland every five years.
This year’s Institute drew 150 attendees, in-
cluding about 60 from Canada. The event is a
chance for women trade union activists and
leaders to meet, share experiences, and learn.
“Not only do they learn new skills and get
new ideas,” says conference organizer Barbara
Byrd, “but they leave with a network of
friends who can support them into the future
as they take on more responsibilities in their
unions. They get a sense of themselves as
part of a larger movement.”
The conference was sponsored by the Labor
Education and Research Center (LERC) of the
University of Oregon, and co-sponsored by
the Washington State Labor Education and
Research Center.
Pictured above, a plenary panel features Vancouver & District Labor Council President Joey
Hartman (at podium), national AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, SEIU Local 503 Execu-
tive Director Heather Conroy, and Family Forward Oregon Outreach Director Ashnie Butler.
...New pension rules could impact retirees’ benefits
From Page 3
more than three retirees for
every active worker.
Multi-employer plans get
their pension contributions from
active employers, who pay a cer-
tain amount per hour under the
terms of their collective bargain-
ing agreements. When a plan has
many more retirees than active
workers, that can make it impos-
sible to recover from financial
market losses.
The biggest failing pension
fund—and the one most expected
to seek permission to cut bene-
fits—is the Teamsters 411,000-
member Central States pension
fund, which has nearly five re-
tirees for every active employee.
NCCMP executive director
Randy DeFrehn says thus far
he’s aware of only a handful of
plans that are planning to use the
law, including Central States,
another Teamster plan in the
New York area, and a construc-
tion industry plan in Ohio. De-
Frehn said he’s not yet aware of
any plans in the Pacific North-
west that are planning to ask for
permission to cut benefits. And
DeFrehn said the Ohio construc-
tion plan might be typical of
what’s to come: The plan won’t
be asking to cut all the way
down to 110 percent of the
PBGC guarantee, because par-
tial reductions of about 25 per-
cent will be enough to restore
solvency: Retirees under 80
who earn about $3,500 a month
now in the Ohio plan would be
looking at about a 25 percent re-
duction to about $2,600 a
month. [That’s much more than
110 percent of the PBGC guar-
antee, a formula that would pro-
vide at most $1,179 a month.]
DeFrehn said plans that are
going to need to cut benefits
should do so sooner rather than
later, because cuts would need to
be bigger the longer they wait.
So far, no plans have asked
the Treasury Department for per-
mission to make retiree benefit
cuts, because the rules were just
released. And the Treasury De-
partment says it does not expect
to approve any applications until
these proposed temporary regu-
lations are finalized after a pub-
lic comment period which ends
Aug. 18, 2015.
The new “special master” in
charge of approving the applica-
tions is attorney Kenneth Fein-
berg. Feinberg has held a num-
ber of previous special appoint-
ments: He was in charge of the
executive compensation restric-
tions banks were subject to un-
der the Troubled Asset Relief
Program (TARP) following the
financial crisis, and he was the
administrator of benefit pro-
grams set up to compensate vic-
tims of the Deepwater Horizon
oil spill, the September 11 at-
tacks, the Boston Marathon
bombings, and the Virginia Tech
shootings.
On June 18, the day after
Feinberg’s appointment and the
new rules were announced, U.S.
Sen. Sanders and U.S. Rep.
Kaptur announced the introduc-
tion of the “Keep Our Pension
Promises Act,” which would re-
peal the pension-cut provisions
of the Kline-Miller Act. Instead,
the bill would allow distressed
plans to partition off “orphaned”
participants into separate plans,
relieving participating employ-
ers from the burden and risk of
paying benefits to employees of
defunct employers. To pay the
promised benefits of the or-
phaned participants, the bill
would create a legacy fund
within the PBGC, paid for by
closing tax loopholes used by
the very wealthy to accumulate
expensive art and avoid estate
and gift taxes. Sanders and Kap-
tur said closing the two loop-
holes would raise $29 billion
over 10 years. Thus far, the bill
has seven co-sponsors in the
House and three co-sponsors in
the Senate (none from Oregon
or Washington).