United Association General Officers and Employees Pension Fund

The United Association General Officers and Employees Pension Fund covers the UA's administrative staff, officers, and employees — a much smaller population than the National Pension Fund, which serves rank-and-file plumbers, pipefitters, and service technicians across local unions. Both operate as Taft-Hartley multiemployer plans with joint union-management trustee boards, but they are legally separate entities with distinct participant pools, contribution rates, and asset pools. The National Pension Fund is significantly larger and has more publicly reported investment activity.

Trustee seats follow standard Taft-Hartley structure with equal union and employer representation. UA General President Mark McManus chairs the board. General Secretary-Treasurer Patrick Kellett also serves as a trustee. The names of employer-side trustees are typically disclosed in the fund's annual Form 5500 filing with the Department of Labor, though these are rotated periodically. All trustees share fiduciary responsibility under ERISA.

Public property records and Form 5500 filings confirm direct ownership of the UA headquarters at 3 Park Place in Annapolis, Maryland; a commercial office building at 442 Gilmour Street in Ottawa, Ontario, with an additional parcel at 295 Gilmour Street; a union hall and training facility at 2404 South Roan Street in Johnson City, Tennessee; and membership interests in country club properties in Annapolis and Hollywood, Florida. The fund also holds automobiles and office equipment. Real estate appears to be the dominant asset class.

No. As a small, internally focused Taft-Hartley pension plan, this fund does not operate as an institutional allocator in the traditional sense. It does not maintain a public RFP process for fund commitments, does not participate in LP co-investment clubs, and does not appear at industry conferences seeking manager relationships. Its investment activity is oriented around directly held assets that support the UA's operational footprint rather than a diversified portfolio of third-party fund investments.

Owning the building that houses its sponsoring union is an acceptable — though concentrated — real estate allocation under ERISA, provided the transaction is at fair market value. For a Taft-Hartley plan, the arrangement eliminates lease expenses for the union and provides the pension fund with a reliable, mission-aligned tenant. The governance safeguard is the joint board: employer trustees must approve any transaction that could disproportionately benefit union-side interests. Critics might question concentration risk, but the structure is not uncommon among building-trades pension funds.