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Release Date: 03/06/2000 Release Number:
00-13 Contact Name: Sharon Morrissey Phone Number:
202.219.8921 |
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Today Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman
announced the five new members of the Advisory Committee on Employee Welfare
and Pension Benefits, an advisory committee known more broadly as the ERISA
Advisory Council. The Council is established by the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). |
The new members, who will serve three-year terms,
are James S. Ray of Washington, DC, representing employee organizations;
Catherine L. Heron of Los Angeles, Calif., representing investment management;
Carl T. Camden of Troy, Mich., representing corporate trust; Timothy J. Mahota
of Santa Barbara, Calif., representing employer organizations, and Evelyn Adams
of Miami, Fla., representing the general public. |
The ERISA Advisory Council is comprised of 15
members from statutorily specified subject areas in employee benefits and
related fields. Members, who serve staggered three-year terms, have an explicit
charter to provide the Labor Secretary with policy recommendations and reports
relating to private pension and other employee benefit issues. Council members
will decide what issues to examine in 2000 at their first meeting, yet to be
scheduled. In 1999, the Advisory Council broke into three working groups and
considered the trend in the defined benefit market to hybrid plans, the
possibility of using surplus pension assets to secure retiree health benefits,
and the benefit implications of the growth of a contingent workforce. |
The ERISA Advisory Council is a valued forum where
representatives of employers, employees, the public and other employee benefit
stakeholders discuss the many complex issues surrounding benefits law. It
provides an opportunity for divergent groups to build consensus on public
policy goals. For this reason, ERISA requires that the Council be comprised of
three representatives of employee organizations (at least one of whom
represents an organization whose members participate in a multiemployer plan);
of employers (at least one of whom represents employers maintaining or
contributing to multiemployer plans); and from the general public (one of whom
represents those receiving benefits from a pension plan); as well as one
representative each from the fields of insurance, corporate trust, actuarial
counseling, investment counseling, investment management and
accounting. |
Attached are brief biographies of the five 2000
appointees.
2000 Appointees to the ERISA Advisory
Council |
James Ray, a senior partner of Connerton &
Ray, a Washington law firm, has been a member of the National Coordinating
Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP), the national advocacy group for the
Taft-Hartley community, for more than 20 years. On the governing council of the
Labor and Employment Law Section, American Bar Association, he is listed among
Best Lawyers in America in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.
Also a frequent speaker and writer on employee benefit and labor law topics,
Ray was a plenary speaker at the National Summit on Retirement Savings called
by President Clinton and the Congress. |
Assistant general counsel of the Capital Group
Companies (CGC) of Los Angeles, Catherine Heron formerly was with the
Investment Company Institute as a vice president and senior counsel for 15
years. CGC is the investment adviser for the American Funds Group, the third
largest mutual fund firm in the U.S. with more than $300 billion in assets.
Heron was a special assistant on the Solicitor of Labors staff and also
worked in the Labor Departments Plan Benefits Security Division, which
serves as the lawyers for the Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration,
which, in turn, staffs the ERISA Advisory Council. Also, Heron was a member of
the board of the Association of Private Pension and Welfare Plans and the Tax
Section of the American Bar Association. |
Carl Camden, executive vice president of field
operations, sales and marketing for Kelly Services, Inc., previously was a
senior vice president and director of corporate marketing with the bank holding
company Key Corp. With more than 200,000 clients and some 750,000 employees
annually, Kelly Services provides human resource solutions through 1,800
offices in 20 countries. He is past co-president of Wyse Advertising and
co-owner of the North Coast Behavioral Research Group. He appeared before the
1999 ERISA Advisory Councils working group on the benefit implications of
a contingent workforce. |
Timothy Mahota, general counsel, chief ERISA
counsel and compliance officer for Mercer Global Advisors in Santa Barbara,
formerly was with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency
that insures defined benefit pension funds. Also, he has been an enforcement
attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as with Dean
Witter Reynolds, Inc. and Kidder, Peabody & Company, Inc. |
Evelyn Adams, an international project manager for
IBM Global Services, will serve as one of the three representatives of the
general public. She has been with IBM for 23 years. Nominated by the Pension
Rights Center, she has been actively engaged in the ad hoc Employee
Coalition, made up of employees from a number of Americas large
corporations who converted their defined benefit plans to cash balance ones. As
president of the IBM Employees Action Coalition (IBEAC), Adams also appeared
before a 1999 ERISA Advisory Council working group studying trends in the
defined benefit market to hybrid plans. |
U.S. Department of
Labor news releases are accessible on the Internet. The information in this
news release will be made available in alternate format upon request (large
print, Braille, audio tape or disc) from the Central Office for Assistive
Services and Technology. Please specify which news release when placing your
request. Call 202.693.7773 or TTY 202.693.7775. |
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