Employees Retirement System of Texas(ERS) is an agency of the Texas state government. [1]
ERS was created in 1947. [2] It oversees retirement benefits of state employees. [3] It is headquartered at 200 E 18th Street in Austin, Texas. [4] It is currently managed by CIO Tom Tull. [5]
As of 2020, the total unfunded liabilities of ERS is $14.7 billion. [6]
A pension fund, also known as a superannuation fund in some countries, is any program, fund, or scheme which provides retirement income. The U.S. Government's Social Security Trust Fund, which oversees $2.57 trillion in assets, is the world's largest public pension fund. Pension funds typically have large amounts of money to invest and are the major investors in listed and private companies. They are especially important to the stock market where large institutional investors dominate. The largest 300 pension funds collectively hold about USD$6 trillion in assets. In 2012, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that pension funds worldwide hold over $33.9 trillion in assets, the largest for any category of institutional investor ahead of mutual funds, insurance companies, currency reserves, sovereign wealth funds, hedge funds, or private equity.
The Fair Deal was a set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in 1945 and in his January 1949 State of the Union Address. More generally, the term characterizes the entire domestic agenda of the Truman administration, from 1945 to 1953. It offered new proposals to continue New Deal liberalism, but with a conservative coalition controlling Congress during most of Truman's presidency, only a few of its major initiatives became law and then only if they had considerable Republican Party support. As Richard Neustadt concludes, the most important proposals were aid to education, national health insurance, the Fair Employment Practices Commission, and repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act. They were all debated at length, then voted down. Nevertheless, enough smaller and less controversial items passed that liberals could claim some success.
The United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) generally considers matters relating to these issues. Its jurisdiction also extends beyond these issues to include several more specific areas, as defined by Senate rules.
Pensions in the United States consist of the Social Security system, public employees retirement systems, as well as various private pension plans offered by employers, insurance companies, and unions.
The California School Employees Association (CSEA) is the largest classified school employees labor union in the United States. CSEA represents a quarter million classified public school employees in California.
In the United States, public sector pensions are offered at the federal, state, and local levels of government. They are available to most, but not all, public sector employees. These employer contributions to these plans typically vest after some period of time, e.g. 5 years of service. These plans may be defined-benefit or defined-contribution pension plans, but the former have been most widely used by public agencies in the U.S. throughout the late twentieth century. Some local governments do not offer defined-benefit pensions but may offer a defined contribution plan. In many states, public employee pension plans are known as Public Employee Retirement Systems (PERS).
The Montana Federation of Public Employees(MFPE) is a Montana labor union. Its 23,000 members make it the largest union in the state.
Edwin D. "Ed" Hill was an electrical worker, labor union activist and labor leader in the United States. He was the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), AFL-CIO from 2001 until his retirement in 2015.
The Employee Free Choice Act is the name for several legislative bills on US labor law which have been proposed and sometimes introduced into one or both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
Thomas Edward Perez is an American politician and attorney currently serving as senior advisor to the president of the United States and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, holding both positions since June 2023. Perez previously served as the United States Secretary of Labor (2013–2017), the chair of the Democratic National Committee (2017–2021), and United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights (2009–2013).
The Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association (MEBA) is the oldest maritime trade union in the United States still currently in existence, established in 1875. MEBA primarily represents licensed mariners, especially deck and engine officers working in the United States Merchant Marine aboard US-flagged vessels. It is a member union of the AFL–CIO.
Teresa Ghilarducci is an American scholar on labor and retirement issues. She has advocated for government to extend occupational retirement plan coverage to all workers. She published Rescuing Retirement in 2018; the book makes the case for a Guaranteed Retirement Account that would supplement Social Security. In 2016 she wrote a popular book, How to Retire with Enough Money: And How to Know What Enough Is. One of her most recent books, When I’m Sixty Four: The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them, investigates the loss of pensions on older Americans and proposes a comprehensive system of reform. Her previous books include Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Employer Pensions, winner of an Association of American Publishers award in 1992, and Portable Pension Plans for Casual Labor Markets, published in 1995. Ghilarducci is an executive board member of the Economic Policy Institute, a member of the Retirement Security Advisory Board for the Government Accountability Office, court appointed trustees for the retiree health care trusts for UAW retirees of GM, Ford, and Chrysler and the USW retirees of Goodyear Tire. Ghilarducci won an Association of American Publishers award for her book Labor's Capital: The Economics and Politics of Employer Pensions in 1992. She previously taught economics for 25 years at the University of Notre Dame.
Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) is a public pension plan of the State of Texas. Established in 1937, TRS provides retirement and related benefits for those employed by the public schools, colleges, and universities supported by the State of Texas and manages a $180 billion trust fund established to finance member benefits. More than 1.6 million public education and higher education employees and retirees participate in the system. TRS is the largest public retirement system in Texas in both membership and assets and the sixth largest public pension fund in America. The agency is headquartered at 1000 Red River Street in the capital city of Austin.
Defined benefit (DB) pension plan is a type of pension plan in which an employer/sponsor promises a specified pension payment, lump-sum, or combination thereof on retirement that depends on an employee's earnings history, tenure of service and age, rather than depending directly on individual investment returns. Traditionally, many governmental and public entities, as well as a large number of corporations, provide defined benefit plans, sometimes as a means of compensating workers in lieu of increased pay.
Phyllis C. Borzi was the Obama administration's Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security of the United States Department of Labor, the official in charge of the Employee Benefits Security Administration.
The Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) is a pension fund for public school employees in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Eligible members include all full-time public school employees, part-time hourly public school employees who render at least 500 hours of service in the school year, and part-time per diem public school employees who render at least 80 days of service in the school year in any of the 770 reporting entities in Pennsylvania.
Donald W. Norcross is an American politician and labor leader who is the U.S. representative for New Jersey's 1st congressional district in South Jersey. A member of the Democratic Party, Norcross was first elected to this congressional seat in 2014, following the resignation of Rob Andrews. His district covers much of the New Jersey side of the Philadelphia metro area, including Camden, Cherry Hill, Lindenwold, and Glassboro.
The United Public Workers of America (1946–1952) was an American labor union representing federal, state, county, and local government employees. The union challenged the constitutionality of the Hatch Act of 1939, which prohibited federal executive branch employees from engaging in politics. In United Public Workers of America v. Mitchell, 330 U.S. 75 (1947), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Hatch Act, finding that its infringement on the Constitutional rights was outweighed by the need to end political corruption. The union's leadership was Communist, and in a famous purge the union was ejected from its parent trade union federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, in 1950.
Thomas Britton "Britt" Harris IV was the chief investment officer of the University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company. The investment management company oversees the assets of The University of Texas and Texas A&M University. In 2013 Harris was announced as the recipient of the aiCIO's Lifetime Achievement Award. He founded and has led Titans of Investing since 2006.
Retirement Plan