This content is from: Corner Office
The 2015 Pension 40: Randy DeFrehn
No. 23 Randy DeFrehn Executive Director / National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans


Randy DeFrehn, a former benefits consultant at Segal Co., scored a career success at the end of last year, when he helped shepherd the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 through Congress as an add-on to a year-end omnibus bill during the December lame-duck session. The MPRA, a revision to ERISA, allows trustees of “severely troubled” multiemployer pension funds to cut promised benefits to plan members; it could apply to 20 percent of those plans, which cover a total of 10.4 million union members. Among the bill’s staunchest opponents are Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has sponsored a bill aimed at reversing MPRA; the Pension Rights Center (No. 22); and many union officials. “No plan has to do this except for ones headed for insolvency,” says DeFrehn, 63, who has lobbied for the Taft-Hartley community since 2001, when he became executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans. The idea behind pension cutbacks — as first outlined in a 2013 NCCMP report, “Solutions Not Bailouts” — was to save a partial benefit for participants in failing plans now rather than wait for the money to run out. The report also recommended redesigning current pension plans to create a pooled defined contribution model, an idea introduced in a congressional hearing earlier this year.
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 3. Chris Christie New Jersey ![]() 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers ![]() 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor |
![]() 6. Kevin de León California ![]() 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico ![]() 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock ![]() 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago ![]() 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions |
![]() 11. John Kline Minnesota ![]() 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. TreasuryDepartment ![]() 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO ![]() 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. ![]() 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution |
![]() 16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. ![]() 17. Mark Mullet Washington ![]() 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America ![]() 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates ![]() 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon |
![]() 21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ![]() 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center ![]() 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans ![]() 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions ![]() 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley |
![]() 26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg ![]() 27. Orrin Hatch Utah ![]() 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University ![]() 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group ![]() 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business |
![]() 31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System ![]() 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services ![]() 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research ![]() 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut ![]() 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp. |
![]() 36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems ![]() 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. ![]() 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition ![]() 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial ![]() 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department |