The Bledsoe Health Trust

The Bledsoe Health Trust

The Bledsoe Health Trust was established in 1959 to provide health and welfare benefits to eligible union members, their dependents, and retirees. The trust is a multi-employer Taft-Hartley fund, maintained through collective bargaining contributions from signatory employers including the Western Wood Products Employers and participating unions such as the Carpenters Industrial Council and the Western Council of Industrial Workers. Garth Fisher serves as Administrative Manager, overseeing operations and regulatory filings from the trust's Seattle headquarters. The trust's investment program is structured around a single mandate: preserving the actuarial soundness of its health and welfare reserves to meet near- and medium-term claims obligations. Asset allocation is conservative by necessity, heavily weighted toward fixed-income, money-market instruments, and short-duration investment-grade credit — a posture that reflects the liquidity requirements of a self-funded health plan rather than the total-return objectives of a defined-benefit pension. Geographic focus is domestic, with reserves managed through institutional separate accounts and commingled vehicles selected by the board of trustees. The fund does not pursue venture capital, private equity, or direct real estate strategies that would impair its ability to pay catastrophic and routine health claims on a monthly cycle. Total reserves are estimated at roughly $167 million, based on public regulatory filings analyzed by Altss. The trust operates from a single office at 2323 Eastlake Ave E in Seattle and maintains no disclosed satellite locations. No separate affiliated foundation, operating company, or co-investment vehicle has been identified in public records. The trust's most recent Form 990 filings confirm Garth Fisher's role as Administrative Manager and list no additional investment staff, suggesting that day-to-day portfolio management is delegated to external institutional managers under board supervision. The Bledsoe Health Trust's structural identity is defined by its Taft-Hartley multi-employer framework — a governance model in which labor and management trustees jointly oversee fund assets, creating an inherent tension between benefit adequacy and contribution affordability. This joint trusteeship distinguishes the trust from single-employer corporate plans and from the endowment-style governance common among family offices. Succession and operational continuity rely on the collective bargaining cycle and trustee appointments rather than on a single family's governance structure.