From ychangenow.com
Jack’s pension counselor
In a post on their campaign Web site, Jack Hearn and his AMO Membership Committee (AMC) said they had turned to “experienced professionals” for advice on retirement security – the most important issue in this year’s AMO election.
Despite use of the plural, Jack and the AMC identified only one man as their pension counselor – Joe Connors, who Jack and the AMC said had “agreed to guide our study of the problem” at no cost to the Hearn-AMC campaign. According to Jack and the AMC, Mr. Connors "has experience with labor going back to the hallmark days of John L. Lewis and the United Mine Workers, where he served as chairman of the Board of Trustees."
For an accurate sense of the depth of the nationwide pension crisis, consider one of its recent casualties – the United Mine Workers Pension Fund.
Lewis served as UMW President from 1920 until 1960. We do not know if Mr. Connors was there in 1946 when the UMW and the Truman administration signed an agreement providing the federal government’s guarantee of the Mine Workers’ medical and retirement benefit fund.
In fact, we do not know anything about Joe Connors, personally or professionally. We cannot comment objectively on his credentials, his capabilities or his career. We are certain that Mr. Connors earned much admiration and respect in labor and industry during his service to the UMW, and we are certain that he is – in Jack’s words – a “dignified” and “good” man.
But we can comment fairly on what Jack and the AMC expect AMO members to believe Mr. Connors can achieve on their behalf during a persistent nationwide pension crisis that shows no sign of easing.
“Working with then-UMW President Richard Trumka, Joe steered the $8.5 billion UMW Pension Fund through the difficult economic downturn of the late 1980s,” Jack and the AMC wrote. “Under his leadership, the UMW Pension Fund weathered this challenging economic period and emerged with an even stronger fund for the members.”
Two immediate observations: the defined benefit AMO Pension Plan also endured the mid-1980s economic recession and emerged as an even stronger fund; and the Reagan recession was nothing at all like the 2008 investment market collapse that devastated so many traditional retirement funds, including the AMO Pension Plan – comparisons here are both inappropriate and pointless.
Jack and the AMC have said the state of the AMO Pension Plan is the result of poor management, not a consequence of the steep market nosedive, a persistent recession and the difficult requirements of the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Despite having posted a list of pension funds now in “critical” status as defined in the Pension Protection Act on their campaign Web site, Jack and the AMC want you to believe that the AMO Pension Plan is the exception, not the rule.
For an accurate sense of the depth of the nationwide pension crisis, consider one of its recent casualties – the United Mine Workers Pension Fund.
One month ago, Associated Press reported that the UMW fund was going broke – a warning echoed by West Virginia Democratic Congressman Nick Rahall, who has proposed what would amount to a federal bailout of the Mine Workers’ fund in the spirit of the 1946 UMW benefit guarantee agreement.
The Congressman told one West Virginia newspaper that the fund was in trouble because of the market meltdown, the small number of active UMW members and the large number of UMW members and dependents who retired from companies that no longer exist – when companies participating in defined benefit pension plans go under, the remaining companies supporting the plan have to cover the defunct companies’ liabilities.
“The problems which plagued the UMWA health program in the past are now afflicting their pension plan,” Rep. Rahall said on the House floor June 23. “At present, well over half of the current retirees never worked for the coal companies currently participating in that plan. This situation, as well as the recent economic downturn, has placed the pension plan on the road to insolvency.” The Congressman said the pensions of more than 120,000 people were at stake.
Rep. Rahall is the principal sponsor of H.R. 5479, the Coal Accountability and Retired Employee Act of 2010 – the “CARE Act.” The bill would divert unobligated funds from an abandoned mine reclamation program to the UMWA Pension Fund.
Joe Connors could not have prevented the UMWA Pension Fund’s freefall. He could not have prevented what happened to the AMO Pension Plan. Nor can Mr. Connors now recommend ways to reverse the AMO Pension Plan’s decline or suggest rehabilitation strategies that had not been considered by the joint union-employer AMO Pension Plan Board of Trustees.
The unfortunate, even tragic truth here is that the UMWA Pension Fund and the AMO Pension Plan reflect the harsh new reality shaping the fate of defined benefit pension plans in the private and public sectors coast-to-coast. With all due respect to Joe Connors, conditions now are not what they were in John L. Lewis’s day.
AMO members who believe that Jack Hearn and the AMC have developed an effective alternative to the rehabilitation plan adopted by the AMO Pension Plan trustees are advised at this point that Jack and the AMC have no pension strategy at all. Jack has already hinted that the rehabilitation plan now in place in AMO would remain indefinitely under a Hearn-AMC administration.
Ask Jack and the AMC to explain specifically what they would do with respect to the retirement security issue as elected officials of AMO – with or without guidance from Joe Connors. Ask them how they would balance the individual circumstances of nearly 4,000 people and develop a fair alternative that would please everyone everywhere. Ask Jack and the AMC if they understand that, no matter who wins this year’s election, the defined benefit AMO Pension Plan will still be in “critical” status, and that federal law and regulation will determine what Jack and the AMC could or could not do.
If Jack and the AMC surprise you with detailed responses and a credible, responsible way to address this difficult dilemma, please suggest to them that they post these responses on their campaign Web site in the interest of an informed vote of the deep-sea, Great Lakes and inland waters membership.
