Pension and Health
One of the key benefits of membership in the Screen Actors Guild is its Pension & Health plan, what’s known in the business as a multi-employer plan, because members can earn credit in the plan when they work under union contracts regardless of the employer. Whether you’re doing a commercial for an agency or a movie for a studio, the pension and health insurance credit is generated on your behalf to the same fund. The plan is administered as an independent entity by a board of trustees comprised half of union and half management representatives. The union trustees are elected by the SAG National Board of Directors and can be fired by that board.
AFTRA also maintains a multi-employer plan, called the AFTRA Health & Retirement Fund. Actors Equity has its own, independent plan. One of the important sources of friction between the unions and unhappiness among members is that because perfomers often work within a single year in the jurisdiction of two or more unions, their pension and health credits are split up among the plans – and this can mean that a performer doesn’t reach minimum qualifying levels in any one plan, thus going without health insurance or pension credit, even though they’re doing a considerable amount of union covered work.
The plans have also become the subject of considerable disagreement in the conflict between Membership First and AFTRA. Membership First has correctly noted that the AFTRA Pension Plan has a lower accrual rate than SAG’s Pension Plan. AFTRA has correctly pointed out that SAG’s plan requires higher earnings to even qualify for a pension credit.
Both plans were hit hard in the 2008 market crash. AFTRA’s plan has already announced reductions in future accruals of pension benefits. SAG’s plan has said that it is still considering its options.
Can the Plans be Merged?
There’s some room for optimism in this area, though. Membership First and AFTRA seem to agree that the Health and Pension plans should be merged, which makes sense, since now the plans are paying for duplicate lawyers, accountants, and adminsitrative people, to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
The catch in this is that management has half the votes in each plan, and has historically resisted merger, to the point of one SAG Plan management trustee claiming that an outside consultant’s report prepared in 2002-2003, known as the Mercer Report, showed that it would not be in the interest of participants for the plans to be merged. SAG’s union side trustees, who had read the same report, responded that the report’s headline was that there were no obstacles to merger.
In retirement (until my next series etc.)does my wife get the retirement of 100% if(///) I?, ya know, kickthebucket
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Ed. Response – That depends on the form of pension you select in the SAG or AFTRA plan. You should talk to P&H to make sure.
Merger has always been a good idea. Duplication of staff, resources, boards, and dues has always been a poor idea.
In the salad days of TV, there was room to argue about this detail or that. Today, at a time of employer consolidation and rapid technological change, at a time when EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS for artists of every jurisdiction, double and triple dues is a travesty. And add to that the continued splitting of earnings to try to get decent health coverage or a pension credit in just one plan…or having double or triple plans with multiple premiums and deductibles before you ever get to something called a “benefit”…and we are firmly in the land of the absurd, indulgent and ridiculous.
If artists don’t focus on building a single 21st century media union with broad jurisdiction, skilled leadership and efficient management, then the vast majority of artists, incapable of negotiating special deals on their own, will become increasingly irrelevant as an overall part of doing business.
There can be no argument here. Merge, converge, consolidate or disappear. Build power and leverage or become irrelevant. I’m not interested in being a union asterisk in a non-union industry. For one thing, I couldn’t afford it.
If I can offer a slight edit to my comment:
Merge, converge, consolidate or disappear. That’s wrong. It is not in industry’s interests for us to disappear. It is in their interests for us to be weak and divided. Available and weak.
A purgatory we need not make for ourselves.
Thought I’d bring to your attention a topic that I think would be good for a discussion on SAGwatch’s home page. The current issue (Fall, 2009) of Take2 , the pension and health newsletter, discusses changes in SAG pension accrual rate. It talks about the accrual rate going down from 3.5% of earnings to 2.0% of earnings. What this article does not say is that this only applies to actors, not to office employees of either the union or SAG Producers Pension and Health Plan – all of whom who are covered under the same pension plan. Their accrual rate will not change. Since these employees already get a more favorable deal on their pension when it comes to years vested vs. percentage of income received in their pensions, how is this fair to actors who provide the bulk of the funds to the pension plan?
Thew staff participants represent an extremely small portion of the SAG pension plan.
And your point is, Tom? Combined with the accural rate and the more favorable deal they get already, why should they be treated differently and why is it not pointed out?
Are you sure it is the same plan, or are you assuming it is? The actors plan is administered by a trust board that includes representatives of the producers, right? Why would SAG staff be part of that when producers do not contribute to their pensions?
It’s the same plan, Geo. They merged several years ago. Staff’s inclusion in the plan is permitted by law and the plan documents.
I can’t find any information that says the staff accrual rates were not changed with everyone else’s. Can you point me to it?
Fred…I am almost 100% certain that is the case. I’m going to find some “official” evidence that will support this contention, however. Give me a couple of days. This should be a point of discussion for everyone.
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Ed. Comment – The explanation we heard for this is that it was part of negotiated compensation for the staff, and that staff morale was bad enough after the layoffs.
“Negotiated compensation for the staff”? Uhh, from my experience that probably means just White and maybe a couple of the other top people. Tho White might be less worried about pension than career staff. Typically they’d be the only ones with actual contracts. Tho I could also see why it would be politically difficult internally to cut the rest of the staff’s pension benefits when the top people don’t take a cut.
But unquestionably it is also politically difficult for the membership to take a cut that staff does not when they share the same plan.
I don’t doubt your veracity, but ERISA requires notice to participants of changes in the plan. Normally, to handle a situation like this, you would set up a completely separate second plan (probably looking something like a 401(k)) as a supplement for the salaried office/union employees rather than screw around with the basic plan for everyone by setting a second allocation rate. That way, you’ve avoided the need to tell EVERYONE about a change that affects a small number, although I can understand the politics in not setting up something different so soon after you’ve merged the benefits. It’s a puzzle.
Exactly. When’s the last time a SAG NED had the job long enough to even reach 100% vesting in the DB plan, let alone max vesting?
DB plans tend to be structured around the needs of real career staff, not “political appointees”. The later have their own deals in my experience.
I understand the position of those concerned about staff layoffs and all but the membership’s opportunities for employment have been severely dented in the last year as well. This solution sounds more like a mini-version of AIG’s decision to pay bonuses in order to keep staff, even when the company was doing poorly. Added to this issue is that there is a great deal of administrative incompetence at our union that simply aggravates the membership more any time they try to deal with what is often an adversarial relationship. So if the membership (who pay the most into this plan) had to lose tens of millions of dollars in revenue that has hurt their pension plan and MIGHT have saved this accural rate cut, then why should the employees not feel the same pain…especially in light of the fact that they have a better arrangement under the pension plan than we do already. (i.e. less years of service for more money).
Let’s just get the facts out…if this is true, someone is taking care of these employees in an unbalanced manner to the plan at whole…and they are choosing not to tell anyone about it.
After looking into it a little farther, the source that informed me of the accrual rate discrepancy between staff and members said that nothing was officially released to the membership…but that it most definitely IS the case. It has to be that they do not want the members to know about it, so they are keeping a low profile on this issue. They haven’t exactly lied. They just haven’t disclosed the inequality of accural rates for people who share the exact same plan. Since the staff already gets an unfair advantage on their pension (years vs. amount paid), I continue to find this unfair to the members who pay the bulk of the contributions.
While different accrual rates within the same plan are legal under ERISA (if the discrimination is based on reasonable grounds), keeping them secret is not. Changes in the plan must be fully explained to the participants. Write to your Trustees and demand a full explanation.
It is also true that the actors have, for a DB, something that the staff does not –portability within their chosen profession (of course it would be even greater if AFTRA and SAG were merged). That’s always been a traditional weakness of a DB and one of the reasons why younger employees found 401k’s attractive. But having portability *and* a DB is one of the great strengths of SAG’s plan.
But the staff doesn’t have that –when they leave SAG they won’t get to carry that DB to the next employer. They’ll either have to abandon partial vesting, or allow full vesting to wither to inflation.
I’m not saying that’s enough of a factor to “justify” anything. It did suprise me tho that they would have combined those plans.