Excerpt:
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has vowed to work with both parties as Labor Department secretary to address the hundreds of underfunded multiemployer pension plans in the U.S. that are now in danger of collapsing.
The big problem standing in his way? Congress has that power, not the U.S. Labor Department, according to labor attorneys and industry insiders. Which means that if Walsh is confirmed by the full Senate for the Cabinet spot, the two-term mayor will have to rely on his organized-labor background and a unique propensity to bridge divides and broker deals outside DOL’s scope to help rescue the tapped-out plans.
“The thing that is going to be pretty neat about going in to see Secretary Walsh is you’re not going to spend the first 20 minutes trying to explain what the heck a multiemployer pension plan is,” said Timothy Lynch, a senior director at Morgan Lewis in Washington who testified in 2018 before the now-defunct Joint Select Committee on the Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans.
Author(s): Austin R. Ramsey
Publication Date: 1 March 2021
Publication Site: Bloomberg Law