Stagehands Local Two Retirement Plan

Stagehands Local Two Retirement Plan

The plan was established to provide retirement coverage for members of IATSE Local 2 Chicago Stagehands, the union representing backstage workers across the city’s major theaters and event spaces. Employer contributions are sourced from a concentrated set of Chicago cultural institutions, including the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Navy Pier Inc., and production services firm PSAV, Inc. Governance rests with union-appointed trustees — President Michael Robinson, Business Agent Craig Carlson, and Secretary-Treasurer Frank Taylor — who oversee the plan’s operations and fiduciary obligations. All investment deployment follows a fund-of-funds mandate, investing in diversified external funds rather than direct company stakes. Specific underlying managers and portfolio weightings are not publicly disclosed. The strategy operates primarily within US markets, drawing from the plan’s single-employer, multi-venue contribution base in Illinois. Past Department of Labor reporting identified the plan as being in critical status, a designation that typically triggers funding improvement measures under the Pension Protection Act. Outside the retirement plan, union member resources point to endorsed service providers — including Alliant health plans and a sponsored estate-planning offering through the Entertainment Community Fund — but no top-tier club memberships or parallel co-investment vehicles are identified. The Local Two union itself operates a political action committee, the IATSE-PAC, and maintains a dedicated organizing program for stagehands. The plan’s structural distinction lies in its narrow contributor base: fewer than a half-dozen major Chicago venues supply the bulk of contributions, creating high concentration risk relative to larger multi-employer pension plans. There is no evidence of a separate asset-management arm or direct-investment program; successive publicly available filings show the fund-of-funds approach has remained consistent, with investment decisions filtered through the union’s trustee governance chain.