< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb
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Terry O’Sullivan
General President / Laborers’ International Union of North America
Last year: Not ranked
Terry O’Sullivan would like to escape from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. He means no disrespect to the PBGC, an insurance scheme established under ERISA to take over troubled or failed pension plans and continue the flow of benefits. But with a net deficit of $52.3 billion, the PBGC, by its own estimate, lacks the capital to cover anticipated needs. “We see it as something that’s broken and cannot be fixed,” says O’Sullivan, 60, a San Francisco native and a member of a local in Charleston, West Virginia, who has run the Laborers’ International Union of North America since 2000. “We believe in solutions, not bailouts,” he says. “If you give us the tools and the flexibility, we can fix our own problems.” From the start, the relationship between multiemployer plans and the PBGC has been uneasy. Multiemployer funds do not have the same type of default risk as single-employer funds dependent on a corporation. Historically, the PBGC has not stepped in to save multiemployer funds until all their assets have been depleted, and the funds have paid lower premiums than single plans. The Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014, which O’Sullivan generally supported, sought unsuccessfully to hike multiemployer premiums from $12 per participant per year to $40. The rate is now $26. O’Sullivan contends that hiking the premium merely punishes healthy funds and retirees. As a result, he and others are pushing for legislation that would take away the PBGC backstop and empower trustees to fix their funds. “We’re not calling for the dissolution of the PBGC,” O’Sullivan says. “What we’re saying is it is not suitable long-term for [multiemployer] funds. We don’t want to pay any more premiums, and the PBGC can’t handle any more liabilities.”
The 2015 Pension 40
1. Bruce Rauner 2. John & Laura Arnold 3. Chris Christie 4. Randi Weingarten 5. Phyllis Borzi |
6. Kevin de León 7. Alejandro García Padilla 8. Laurence Fink 9. Rahm Emanuel 10. Sean McGarvey |
11. John Kline 12. J. Mark Iwry 13. Damon Silvers 14. Jeffrey Immelt 15. Joshua Gotbaum |
16. Robin Diamonte 17. Mark Mullet 18. Terry O’Sullivan 19. Raymond Dalio 20. Ted Wheeler |
21. Thomas Nyhan 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman 23. Randy DeFrehn 24. Robert O’Keef 25. Caitlin Long |
26. Kenneth Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend 29. Ian Lanoff 30. Joshua Rauh |
31. Ted Eliopoulos 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle 33. Teresa Ghilarducci 34. Denise Nappier 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. |
36. Hank Kim 37. Paul Singer 38. Bailey Childers 39. Amy Kessler 40. Judy Mares |
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