The Employees Retirement System of Texas manages the retirement system for all state agency employees; and the health plan for all agency employees, agency retirees, and almost half of all state university employees and retirees.

The ERS is governed by a nine-member Board of Trustees. Three of the trustees are directly elected by state agency employees and retirees, and the other three are appointed by state government officials. The three elected Board positions make the ERS one of the most democratic state employees retirement systems in the country. We state employees and retirees have the power to elect half of the Board that rules our retirement and health plans.

The Texas Legislature has the power to decide how much funding the ERS will get, but the Board of Trustees decides how the pension and health plans will be managed. More importantly,
the ERS Board of Trustees has the power and duty to advocate for our pension and health care benefits. For this reason, state employees and retirees need representatives on the ERS Board who are willing to stand up to political pressure and push back against attempts to cut our benefits.

When our health insurance co-pays and premiums go up, it is the ERS Board which makes those decisions. The ERS Board decides which health care providers we get, designs our health care coverage and acts as a Court of Appeals to those denied coverage. The ERS Board also decides how to invest our retirement funds If you have never thought about the ERS Board and the decisions its makes, consider these questions:

Do rising health care costs make you sick?
For the past several years, state workers have been hit by increases in health care costs, especially the “out of pocket” costs that we pay when we go in for health care services. After the Texas Legislature refused to fully fund our health care plan in 2009, the ERS Board adopted major new increases in co-pays and deductibles this year. In addition, the employee share of premiums that is deducted from our pay checks has been rising almost every year.

Are you worried that you won't be able to afford coverage for your family?
The result of this increasing co-pays and premiums, while our pay has been losing ground to inflation for over 20 years, is that the cost of health care is more than many state employees can afford. Some state employee have already made the difficult decisions to skip doctor visits or drop their families from ERS benefits, because they could not afford the premiums and co-pays.

Do you worry that your retirement benefits will be not there when you need them?
In 2009, instead of restoring funding for our pension plans, the Texas Legislature cut retirement benefits for new state employees while increasing the pension deduction from our paychecks at the same time. The Legislature’s refusal to fully fund our pension plan has meant that retirees have now gone a decade without a cost of living increase.

The attacks will get worse in 2011
With a state budget shortfall looming, many state legislators are already talking about slashing our pension and health plans to save money. There is open talk of converting our plans to the “defined contribution” plans that have cheated millions of Americans out of a secure retirement and left them in poverty in their senior years.

We need ERS Board members who will stand up to the politicians.
Our ERS Board members have to know which side they are on: state employees’ and retirees’ side! They will need the courage and determination to push back, publically, against attempts to balance the budget across the backs of state employees and retirees. We need ERS Board members who will not pass the buck or let political loyalties get in the way of them doing their jobs. We need TSEU member Bob Stewart on the ERS Board.

The Board of Trustees of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas controls the pension plan for about 1.2 million public and higher education employees in Texas. About 132,000 TRS members work at public universities.

The TRS pension fund is worth about $104 billion, and is one of the largest public employee pension funds in the country. Due mostly to long periods when the Texas Legislature cut state contributions to the fund, the TRS pension plan is not considered fully funded, and TRS retirees have not had a cost-of-living pension increase since 2001.

The TRS pension fund has also been plagued by attempts to politicize its investment policies, and the fund has suffered significant losses in the past because the political agendas of elected officials, especially the governor, were allowed to affect investment policies.

Now there is a growing push among some legislators to cut university employees’ pension plans in order to cut spending. Some legislators are openly suggesting that the current system be converted to a “defined contribution” 401-k type plan. These plans, while saving money for employers, have left millions of Americans facing poverty in their retirement years.

TRS members – university employees, junior college employees, school district employees, and retirees – need a strong Board of Trustees that will stand up for TRS members, not bow to political pressure.

How TRS Trustees are elected/appointed

Unlike in the Employees Retirement System, TRS Board members are not directly elected by the members of the system. All nine TRS trustees are appointed by the Governor after nominees are “elected” by various groups of TRS members.

For the trustee representing higher education employees, a statewide election is held in which all employees of state universities can vote. The Governor then appoints a trustee from among the the three candidates who got the highest numbers of votes statewide. TSEU has called for reforms that would allow TRS members to directly elect TRS Trustees, but we are stuck with this system for now.

TSEU will have three candidates running, and we will work to make sure that they are the top three when the voting is done. That is the only way we can be assured that a TSEU candidate will be appointed to the TRS Board of Trustees.