Employers' - Warehousemen's Pension Trust Fund

Employers' - Warehousemen's Pension Trust Fund

The Employers' - Warehousemen's Pension Trust Fund is a multiemployer defined-benefit plan established to serve members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 26, based in Los Angeles. The plan's board includes union representatives and employer trustees, with ILWU Local 26 President Luisa Gratz serving as chairperson. By 2018, the fund fell into "critical and declining" status under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act (MPRA), a designation reserved for plans projected to become insolvent within 15 to 20 years, triggering a statutory requirement to cut benefits and submit a rehabilitation plan to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The trust's investment strategy spans venture capital, buyouts, co-investments, and secondaries, deployed through both direct and fund-of-funds structures. Stage coverage stretches from seed rounds through late-stage expansion, signaling participation in external GP-led vehicles rather than a dedicated in-house direct investment team. The fund has maintained a small direct real estate footprint, holding the Warehouse Men's Union Building, a commercial property at 5625 S. Figueroa Street in Los Angeles. The plan operates from a union hall-adjacent governance structure, with no disclosed separate investment office or dedicated CIO. Secretary Moises Figueroa and Trustees Hector Aguilar and Gene Hulsey oversee plan administration alongside Gratz. There is no adjacent foundation, co-investment club, or operating company structured alongside the trust, distinguishing it from the endowed university systems and family-office hybrid models that increasingly dominate institutional LP allocations. Its structural differentiator is its regulatory posture: the plan is one of roughly 130 multiemployer pensions in "critical and declining" status nationwide, operating under federal oversight rather than independent investment committee discretion. This compresses its time horizon and limits its ability to make new long-duration commitments, making it a forced seller or reluctant hold in secondaries markets rather than an active allocator competing for new-manager capacity.