Mandatory lay pensions get committee endorsement
Episcopal News Service. July 10, 2009 [071009-02]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
The 76th General Convention committee on the Church Pension Fund unanimously recommended July 10 that the Episcopal Church establish a mandatory pension system for its lay employees.
Because Resolution A138 would amend parts of Canon 1.8, it must pass through the convention's committee on canons. It will then go first to the House of Bishops for consideration.
The requirement would apply to people who are scheduled to work a minimum of 1,000 hours annually for any domestic ecclesiastical organization or body subject to the authority of the church. The system would be provided by the Church Pension Group (CPG) and begin not later than January 1, 2012.
The recommendation grew out of research conducted by CPG in response to 75th General Convention Resolution A125 and a request by the church's Executive Council that called for the organization to study the church's lay employees and consider whether providing lay pensions should be required by canon, and whether a pension plan should be administered by a single provider.
That study showed that not all such employees are covered 17 years after General Convention passed Resolution D165a, saying church-related employers "shall provide" lay pension benefits for employees who work at least 1,000 hours. However, such a plan was not required by the canons, and employers were free to provide coverage from any source.
CPG's study found that 93 percent of diocesan lay employees who work 20 hours or more a week and have been employed for more than one year have employer-provided pension benefits. Approximately 70 percent of similar congregational employees are covered.
Eighty percent of the covered diocesan employees and 67 percent of the congregational employees participate in Church Pension Fund plans.
The study estimated the cost to provide pension benefits to those lay employees who are not covered ranges from $34 to $12 per pledging unit, depending upon the size of the congregation. The average cost would be approximately $20 per pledging unit.
Employers of Episcopal Church clergy are required to pay into CPG's pension fund for ordained ministers.
No one who testified at the committee's July 10 hearing opposed the plan.
Church Pension Group President Dennis Sullivan told the committee July 10 that General Convention first asked that the church consider mandatory pensions for lay employees in 1976.
Missy Morain of the Diocese of Washington and the convener of the Colloquium of Episcopal Professional and Vocational Associations (CEPVA) told the committee she was going to use her two minutes of testimony "to simply stand up and say 'duh' and sit back down again."
However, she continued, she then realized that the Episcopal Church "has been working on lay pensions for my entire lifetime. It's too long."
Retired Diocese of Maine Bishop Chilton Knudsen, a former CPG trustee, asked the committee to "put on your high doctrine of sin" and consider that some church employers might reduce their employees' hours to create "a lot of 999-hour-a-year jobs."
She suggested providing reduced benefits with employees who work at least 500 hours or some other device to prevent "perpetuating the injustice that we are trying to avoid."
Covering lay employees in overseas dioceses is complicated by differing tax regulations and local laws, the CPG study concluded. Resolution A138 calls for CPG to report to the 77th General Convention about the feasibility of including those employees.
Those dioceses include Colombia, the Convocation of American Churches in Europe, Central Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Litoral Ecuador, Micronesia, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Venezuela and the Virgin Islands.