November 4, 2013 — A couple of dozen boat owners don't matter a hill of beans to the federal government. But these men pursued the American dream, worked hard, played by the rules, and in the end were left with worse than nothing.
That's just wrong.
Imagine, for a moment, that you would like to retire and draw your pension from the fund into which you've been paying for years, maybe decades.
Then imagine that your pension fund turns around and tells you that you may collect the monthly check for $500 or so, but at the same time you have to cough up a half million dollars to cover your share of the pension fund's unfunded obligations to its 600 or so beneficiaries.
Does that sound reasonable? I didn't think so.
But this isn't far-fetched. For a handful of New Bedford groundfishermen, it is real life.
Everyone knows by now that the federal government has clamped down on fishing for all the reasons I don't need to get into here.
So that has stopped almost all the groundfish boats from fishing. That, in turn, has nearly cut off the supply of funds being paid into the New Bedford Fishermen's Pension Fund, which collects 2.2 percent off the top of the catch of every boat, before expenses.
That, plus the recession of 2008 that drained $4 million from the assets of the fund, leaves the fund underwater with only 80 percent of the assets it needs to meet its obligations.
And as you might expect, there's nobody to bail it out. Too small. No Wall Street safety net. No bonuses for the managers who preside over the mess. No sympathy from the green eyeshade crowd that sees the cold, hard numbers.
I sat last Friday in a corner of the ballroom at the Fishermen's Club on Orchard Street in the South End with the pension funds actuary, its trustees, a couple of lawyers, and about eight angry and desperate boat owners/operators who are trapped in this dilemma, and who insisted that a reporter stay in the room so you could learn about the fix they are in.
Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times