< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
37
Andy Stern
Senior Fellow
Columbia University
PNR
For Andy Stern, 64, the former organizing dynamo at the Service Employees International Union and now a senior fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law and Public Policy, the pension crisis is part of a deeper problem with employment. Stern is finishing a book on the future of work, which struggles with the realities of not enough full-time jobs, growing inequality and a breakdown of the ERISA dream of lifetime security. Since leaving SEIU in 2009, Stern has hammered on the need for more-radical policies to stem the erosion of employee defined benefit pensions. Stern, always a controversial figure, raised hackles in the labor movement when he supported Gina Raimondo’s (No. 14) bid to become Rhode Island’s governor, despite her pension reform efforts, which have drawn union attack and litigation. Raimondo, he warns, is only one of many figures trying to do the right thing. “I feel sometimes that we forget that pensions are math, and when the math doesn’t work, you have to do something,” he explains. “Unfortunately, workers pay the price.” Stern sees a landscape full of well-meaning people who need to be brought together — he’s proud of a clause he and former New Hampshire Republican senator Judd Gregg inserted into the Simpson-Bowles report on the need for a national pension effort similar to the S&L and Wall Street bailouts — but he also notes the destructive tendencies of ideologues of all kinds. The idea he favors: a portable, national funding scheme that can provide defined-benefit-like income through annuities — not unlike, he says, Australia’s Superannuation Guarantee program.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
