# Southern California Local 831 - Employer Pension Fund

Southern California Local 831 - Employer Pension Fund is a Pension Fund based in Monterey Park, United States.

## Overview

- **Organization type:** Pension Fund
- **Headquarters:** Monterey Park, United States
- **Region:** North America
- **Address:** Covina, CA, United States
- **Founded:** 1957
- **Assets under management:** $400M - $500M (Altss estimate)
- **Website:** www.local831.org

## Regulatory record

- **Reports private funds:** No

## About

Southern California Local 831-Employer Pension Fund was established in 1957 to provide retirement, disability, and death benefits to participants working under collective bargaining agreements in the Southern California tradeshow and sign crafts industries. The plan is sponsored by Tradeshow and Sign Crafts Local 831 and affiliated with the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) through District Council 36. Employer Trustee Joe Steffan serves as Plan Administrator alongside Jon Coley as Plan Sponsor and Trustee. The fund's investment strategy centers on mezzanine debt and private credit, a concentrated approach atypical among similarly sized multiemployer plans that often default to 60/40 public-markets portfolios. Confirmed commitments include the Locust Point Private Credit Fund I, a vehicle targeting middle-market direct lending opportunities across the United States. Viad Corp, through its GES division, ranks among the fund's major contributing employers. The Board of Trustees includes three named employer-side representatives — Joe Steffan, Ron Brown, and Jon Coley — though the full trustee roster and any investment consultant relationships remain undisclosed. The fund maintains a modest operational footprint from its headquarters in Covina, California, with no satellite offices. Its size places it in the small-to-mid Taft-Hartley cohort, where governance bandwidth and staff depth are perpetual constraints. Structurally, the fund differs from larger public pension systems by operating as a multiemployer plan governed jointly by union and employer trustees — a Taft-Hartley architecture that embeds collective bargaining dynamics directly into investment governance. This legal structure creates a distinct stakeholder alignment: investment returns must satisfy both union-represented participants and the contributing employers who fund the plan. The fund's narrow private-credit mandate may reflect trustee preference for contractual cash flows over mark-to-market volatility in public equities.

## Sectors

- Private Credit
- Secondaries & Special Situations

## People

- Joe Steffan — Plan Administrator and Employer Trustee
- Jon Coley — Plan Sponsor and Trustee
- Ron Brown — Employer Trustee

## Questions

### How is the fund related to the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades?

The fund covers participants working under collective bargaining agreements administered by Tradeshow and Sign Crafts Local 831, which is chartered under District Council 36 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT). IUPAT provides the broader labor-union affiliation, while Local 831 represents the specific sign-crafts and tradeshow workers whose employers contribute to the plan.

### Who are the major contributing employers to the pension fund?

Viad Corp, through its Global Experience Specialists (GES) division, is a significant contributing employer. GES provides tradeshow and event services that align directly with the sign-crafts and tradeshow work covered by Local 831's collective bargaining agreements. The full roster of contributing employers is not publicly disclosed.

### Does the fund invest nationally or only within California?

The fund's confirmed private-credit commitment targets middle-market lending opportunities across the United States and does not appear restricted to California or the Western region by mandate. As a Taft-Hartley plan, its investment policy is not geographically constrained to the location of its participating employers, though explicit geographic-limit disclosures are unavailable.

### What retirement benefits does the fund provide?

The plan provides retirement, disability, and death benefits to qualifying participants. As a defined-benefit plan, benefits are calculated based on a formula incorporating years of service and compensation history, rather than depending on individual account balances and market returns as in a defined-contribution plan.

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Last updated: 2026-08-11T02:43:31.692Z

Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/southern-california-local-831-employer-pension-fund

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