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SEIU official: Transferring pension plan isn’t a hitch
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Forum Health president and chief executive officer Walter Pishkur at Hillside Hospital in Howland.
Pishkur says union’s latest offer on concessions is short by $3.1M
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN — A Service Employees International Union spokesman says his members don’t oppose having their pension plan transferred from Forum Health to the federal government.
It’s not one of the issues on which Forum and the union are at odds, said Rob Johnson, hospital division director for the union’s District 1199.
Johnson spoke during a conference call Tuesday in the wake of Forum’s filing a motion last week asking the bankruptcy court to relieve the health system of financial responsibility for the pension plan and place it under the auspices of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
District 1199 represents some 1,300 Forum employees, including about 680 at Northside Medical Center.
Forum’s motion in bankruptcy court, which Johnson said “shocked” the union, said immediate relief from the pension plan is critical to the hospital system’s survival.
The motion asking the court to intervene was needed because Forum has no new formal agreements with SEIU or the Youngstown General Duty Nurses Association/Ohio Nurses Association, leaving contracts in place that say Forum must provide a pension plan, said Walter Pishkur, Forum president and chief executive officer.
Pishkur has said Friday’s action was necessitated by the extended contract negotiations with District 1199 and the nurses’ union, both of which represent employees at Northside. “We filed the motion because it was critical to move forward quickly,” he said.
The pension plan covers about 7,132 working and retired employees.
Pishkur also said the hospital system’s motion, should it be approved by the court at a hearing Tuesday, would not cause employees or retirees to lose their pensions. Instead, it would secure them, he said, as well as relieve Forum of the financial burden. The hearing will be before Judge Kay Woods of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Youngstown.
“It is my hope that the July 14 hearing will allow us to move forward on the pension issue,” he said.
Pishkur said the pension plan is underfunded by about $100 million, which he attributed to “sharp market drops that reduced the value of invested assets.”
He also said Forum did not make its quarterly $1.5 million pension-plan contribution due in April.
Johnson said the union would prefer to have Forum’s defined benefits and 401(k) retirement plans but is OK with the PBGC, “We view it as a positive thing. We believe the federal-pension-benefit corporation secures pensions up to $54,000 a year and don’t believe any SEIU member [at Northside] would draw more than that.”
In the related matter of Forum’s board of trustees’ rejecting a tentative agreement with Northside’s nurses, it really was a matter of the timetable for when concessions would be reinstated, Pishkur said.
“After looking more carefully, we did not believe 18 months would be enough time for Forum to become financially sound enough to attract new lenders to get us out of bankruptcy and capitalize the hospital. Our current lenders want out,” he said.
Pishkur emphasized that the timetable was the reason for rejecting the tentative agreement with the nurses’ union. He said Forum has made a counterproposal that is “not that radical a change from 18 months.”
Regarding other issues with the nurses, there was agreement on the amount of cost savings through concessions and the items it took to get there. The only hitch was that period of time when the concessions would return, he said.
Pishkur said Forum and SEIU are not as close to an overall agreement. He said Forum’s goal is $5.6 million in concessions from the union’s members, and SEIU’s last offer was $2.5 million.
Pishkur and Johnson both said they believe a deal is possible.
“Our members are very, very adamant about seeing Forum survive. We are apart in some categories, but I believe with the July 15 and 22 meetings, we’ll be able to get together if Forum comes to the table open-minded,” Johnson said.
Pishkur said the health systems’s leadership is moving along the path set out when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection March 15. Forum will fill a restructuring plan Sept. 15 and emerge from bankruptcy Dec. 16, as set out in its original filing with the court, he said.
alcorn@vindy.com