Lay employee pension benefits: Does your church offer them?

This Labor Day can you say whether lay employees across your diocese are receiving the pension benefit mandated by General Convention?

As the Church Pension Group reminds us, “Episcopal employers subject to the authority of the Church are required to provide a pension to all lay employees scheduled to work a minimum of 1,000 hours annually. Implementation was to be completed by January 1, 2013.” (Link added.)

Earlier this month the Diocese of Virginia issued lay employee benefits statistics based upon reports gathered from churches of the diocese, stating, “The 2014 Lay Compensation Reports summarizing compensation and benefits for lay employees across the diocese are complete. Since 2013, 144 churches have provided updated information on their employees.” These statistics can be found here. The diocesan finance office accompanied the report with this reminder

Resolution A138, adopted at General Convention 2009 requires us to provide pension benefits for any lay employee of the Episcopal Church working 1,000 hours or more per year (20 hours per week) and to utilize the Church Pension Group standards as a baseline. GC 2012 allowed an extension for schools until January 1, 2018, using a phase-in model. (links added)

The Diocese of Virginia report is shown below — omitting the two job categories, day school aide and day school teacher/director.

350 employees work 20 or more hours per week (1000 or hours per year). Of these 75 percent have the pension benefit mandated by A138. For those working 20 to 29 hours per week, 53% have the mandated pension benefit.For those working 30 to 40 hours per week, 89% have the mandated pension benefit. In some job categories the percentages are substantially lower — see, for example, administrative assistant/secretary. Unknown is whether churches reduced hours of some positions so they fell below 20 hours.

Do you know of other dioceses who have issued such a report on the web (link?)?