NY Senator Tony Avella to Introduce Bill to Combat Pension Stripping

New York State Senator Tony Avella will introduce legislation in the upcoming session designed to protect retirees whose pensions are sold off without advance notice.  Once known as “pension de-risking” retirees refer to this method of transferring the financial risk of pensions from corporations to retirees as “pension stripping”.  The method of pension stripping that seems to be the corporate favorite converts a pension into a group annuity contract causing retirees to lose the uniform protections intended by Congress under ERISA including the  annual coverage provided by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.  The proposed legislation is designed to replace the protections for earned benefits that were intended under ERISA with reasonably equivalent  protection at the state level.