NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | August 24, 2018 | PAGE 31
RETIREMENT
NORTHWEST
LABOR
PRESS
OPEIU members are voting
on whether to cut their own
pension – to halt insolvency
About 7,400 current and former
members of nine western union
locals of Office and Professional
Employees International Union
(OPEIU) face a vote on whether
to cut their own promised pen-
sion benefits by 30 percent — in
order to prevent the pension
from running out of money al-
together in 2036.
Assets owned by the Western
States OPEIU Pension Fund lost
value in the 2008 financial
crash, but because its participat-
ing unions have shrunk greatly
in recent decades, there are now
too few participating employees
to be able to ramp up contribu-
tions and recover from that
shortfall.
About one in ten union multi-
employer pension plans nation-
ally are in the same predica-
ment, headed for insolvency. To
respond to that crisis, Congress
passed a law called Multiem-
ployer Pension Reform Act
(MPRA) in 2014 that allows the
union and employer trustees of
failing pension plans to propose
benefit cuts to a certain extent
— just enough to save the pen-
sion plans themselves from go-
ing under.
In the case of the Western
States OPEIU Pension Fund,
the participants are mostly cler-
ical staff at labor unions and de-
funct or no-longer-unionized
trucking companies. Retirees
and vested former workers in
the plan today outnumber cur-
rent workers by 11 to 1.
Participants in the Western
States OPEIU pension, includ-
ing members of Vancouver-
headquartered OPEIU Local 11,
received ballots and instructions
in the mail Aug. 20. They’ll
have until Sept. 7 to cast a ballot
by mail, telephone or online.
But under MPRA, a majority of
pension plan participants must
vote no in order to overturn a cut
proposed by trustees, not just a
majority of those voting. In ef-
fect, participants who don’t vote
are counted as “yes” votes.
If the cuts aren’t overturned,
retirees and their surviving
spouses will see their pension
payments reduced as of Oct. 1,
though no cuts will be made to
those 80 years old or older, and
the cuts are less than 30 percent
for those 75 to 80. The cuts also
apply to those who retire after
that date; their benefit will be 30
percent less than was formerly
promised.
In all cases, the reduced ben-
efit levels will still be more than
the amount retirees would get
from the Pension Benefit Guar-
anty Corporation (PBGC) if the
plan were to become insolvent
in 18 years, as is projected.
The Western States pension
cut proposal is explained in de-
tail at a special web site, wspen-
sionrecovery.com.
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