U.A. Plumbers 63 & Steamfitters 353 Joint Pension

A joint board of trustees — split evenly between union representatives from Plumbers Local 63 and Steamfitters Local 353 and employer-side trustees — holds fiduciary authority over the plan's investment program. Tommy O'Brien, Business Manager of Steamfitters 353, and David M. Maroon Jr., Business Manager of Plumbers 63, serve as trustees and are the principal points of contact for institutional mandates. Day-to-day investment oversight is typically delegated to an external consultant, though the specific provider is not publicly disclosed.

Both Plumbers Local 63 and Steamfitters Local 353 are chartered locals of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry (UA), the international union. The UA provides training standards, charter oversight, and some administrative support, but the pension fund is a separate legal trust governed by its own board of trustees. The international does not control the plan's assets or investment decisions.

The fund constructs a diversified institutional portfolio. Core holdings include public equities and fixed income, supplemented by allocations to private-market strategies. Real estate and infrastructure are natural fits given the membership's construction-trade profile. Private credit and secondary/special-situations strategies round out the alternatives bucket, offering the yield and smoothing characteristics that multi-employer plans seek when managing liability-hedging portfolios.

The fund evaluates fund commitments across the private-markets spectrum. As a sub-billion-dollar Taft-Hartley plan, the board typically favors established middle-market managers with track records demonstrable over multiple economic cycles. The plan does not publicly disclose a specific pacing schedule or restriction on venture capital, but the liability-aware posture of building-trades pension trustees generally results in conservative pacing and a preference for cash-flowing strategies over pure growth-stage exposure.

No. The Plumbers 63 Educational Trust Fund and Steamfitters 353 Educational Trust Fund are legally separate vehicles. They fund apprenticeship training, journeyman upgrade classes, and instructor salaries rather than retirement benefits. Each operates under its own board and investment policy, distinct from the joint pension plan's governance structure.

The plan's board has not publicly articulated a formal co-investment program. Mid-sized Taft-Hartley plans in this asset range sometimes allocate co-investment discretion to an outsourced CIO or consultant, but the capacity constraints of a sub-billion-dollar fund typically limit the number of co-investment opportunities that meet minimums. Any direct co-investment sleeve would almost certainly flow through the fund's private-market consultant relationship.

The joint sponsorship means two separate bargaining units' contribution streams and participant demographics feed into a single trust. The investment policy must accommodate both locals' funding ratios, workforce age profiles, and projected benefit payout schedules. This dual-mandate tension often produces a slightly more conservative glidepath than a single-employer plan of comparable size, as trustees must satisfy the fiduciary obligations to two distinct sets of beneficiaries.