No Patty, you are not wrong. Matching funds on the 401k would give the employer incentive to stop contributing to our defined pension plan and to eventually eliminate it.
There has been much misinformation bandied about here regarding this Employer’s tool and its use. Let’s get the record straight, and let’s put a little effort into understanding the enemy.
Our employers (all employers) are out to make and save money. There are more efficient ways of doing this than maintaining a union workforce (duh). There are many more efficient ways of doing this than maintaining an ILWU union workforce (duh, duh)
A large part of the stickum that holds the whole ILWU Longshore division together (that is to say: prevents employers from going non Union) is your VESTED pension, and the various government controls on it.
Vested means that after a certain amount of time in the industry, the employer owes you a given amount of pension ...no matter what. That means that 20, 30 or 40 years down the line, you still have a legal relationship with that company. our people working in welfare are very busy dealing with such issues for retirees right now.
Get it? The employer owes you (no matter what) for something in the future, for which you haven’t earned him the money YET! This is a very a nice card to have in your hand. I am dismayed at the number of people writing about this hand who obviously have never played this version of poker.
In fact, if one of our employers
a. goes non-union,
b. goes out of business or
c. sells his operation to someone who goes non-union:
he is STILL required to make what would have been his PMA member’s contribution to that benefit for the next five years.
For more information on how this works, see the ILWU-PMA Pension Plan and what are known as the “Carpenters’ Law“ and the “Little Carpenters’ Law“. (McWilliams’s recent secret amendment to the Plan let the employer off the hook somewhat, under certain conditions, but if the employers actually tried to do what he seems to have allowed them, we’d have a good chance of winning in court)
401K plans are not vested. They let the employer off the hook on an annual basis.
If you were to come around in, say 30 years, and say “Mr. Employer about my 401k, it seems that in 1999... “, the Employer would stop you and say “I’m sorry, Pat, but all my obligations to your 1999 401k were met in 1999, and I have had no further worries about it since. That has been entirely YOUR problem since your last 1999 paycheck.“
The concept of allowing the employer to wash his hands of ANY obligation is alien to me. The concept of bargaining to increase his opportunity to do so will be welcomed by the PMA at any future negotiations. At the first mention of it at the bargaining table, the Employers suggested supplanting the vested pension with a 401k. So those of you rabid 401k fans have no need to worry. As long as the employer does not forget what’s cheaper for him and less obligation to you, this will never become a dead issue.
Has anybody else ever bothered to research the matter? You will find glorious articles about the advantages of 401k plans in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal etc. (you know the pro-labor press that the working man always reads)
Also, the 401k plan does not benefit everybody in the work force equally. It favors those with a larger income (just the type of benefit that the good union man always supports)
In my (humble) opinion: if you don’t negotiate for EVERYBODY, you don’t REALLY negotiate for anybody!
Stop comparing it to other 401ks and stop comparing our pention benefits in general to those of other unions.... its apples and oranges. First The ILWU-PMA 401k is a multi-employer 401k, or should I say THE multi-employer 401k? (try and find another one) As such, it has properties that do not exist elsewhere and therefor cannot be compared to the benefits of other workers.
In the 93 negotiations, we lost our in-port travel pay. Longshoremen and Clerks were compensated (poorly) for this with a one time only (later re-negotiated) transition travel fund. The Foremen, on the other hand, looked at the amount of money which the same sort of transition fund that the Longies and Clerks bargained would have given them, and bargained to have the same amount of money payed as a matching 401k contribution.
Stop complaining! It is one thing to beef about someone getting a better deal than you, quite another to gripe about them bargaining smarter, when you could have done the same (at the same cost to the employer)
frats,
ole
