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ANNUAL REPORT 2012 PUBLICA (posted 27.05.2013)

Estimated costs

Pursuant to Article 32 paragraph 1 of the Personnel Act, ordinary compensation of inflation can not be granted by a pension fund before its fluctuation reserves reach 15% (115% capital coverage rates). Pension funds in the PUBLICA system are very remote from this. There can therefore be only extraordinary compensation by the employer.

The financial consequences of partial compensation of inflation on pensions are estimated as follows:
– Permanent revaluation of pensions: 170 million in present value per 1% increase
– One-time premium proportional to pensions; 16 million per 1%
– One-time constant premium: 41 million francs per 1000 CHF.

Reduction of the conversion rate (May 2011)

The conversion rate will decrease, i.e. from 6,530 CHF per 100,000 CHF of accumulated capital today, pensioneers will only receice 6,150 CHF if they retire after June 30, 2012. This will be almost entirely offset by increasing their accumulated capital, both by dissolving reserves and increasing the employer’s contribution, so that the vast majority of insured persons will not feel the difference.

Delegates assembly of Publica (May 2009)

Results of the elections of the EPFL representatives to the delegates assembly of Publica

Please remember that the personnel associations participated in these elections with separate lists in the ETH domain, one list with candidates selected by APC and VPOD-SSP and another list prepared by ACC. A third list prepared by a group of PSI personnel did not place a single candidate. Indeed, 8 candidates were elected from the ACC list and 6 from the APC-VPOD-SSP list. The EPFL will be represented by Mrs. Marianne Wannier and Mr. Pierre Stadelmann (lAPC-VPOD-SSP list) and by Mr. Philippe Thalmann (ACC list).
The participation rate was not very high (14.7%), reason more to thank warmly all those who participated in the vote and especially those who put their confidence in the ACC candidates.

Detailed results of the elections (in French)

In May 2009, the delegates assembly elected Piero Cereghetti, ACC member at ETHZ, as the representative of the ETH personnel into the governing board of Publica.

Employer-employee board of the Pension Fund for the ETH domain (Nov 2008)

ACC-EPFL was always in favour of a democratic procedure of election, organised by the School assembly, for the staff representatives in the employer-employee board of our new pension fund. It considered that this election and the possibility of being heard on the new pension regulation constitute progress compared to the former situation, even if it unfortunately accompanied a serious and unacceptable deterioration of the terms of reference for the federal personnel. ACC-EPFL hopes that the ETH board will keep its promise to seek a better solution in the coming years.

The employer-employee board had very little room for movement. It nevertheless obtained remarkable improvements, particularly for the employees aged 45 and more. Its next task will be the preparation of the transition towards another solution, for example a pension fund of the ETH domain outside of PUBLICA. It would have been an error to stay outside of the process or to simply shout for it from the aisles. If the EPFL decided not to delegate any staff representative, this board would simply have operated with 6+6 members. Indeed, we could boycott the employer-employee board but not prevent its constitution.

In regard of the results obtained by the board, ACC-EPFL recommends that the current delegates of the EPFL staff be re-elected: Chantal Vicari-Strickler, Robert Dalang, and Olivier Kern. It would be delighted to see Mr. Luc Jeanneret as the first replacement.

The board might have an important task coming in the next year: to find ways to improve the capital cover of the ETH pension fund. Indeed, it needs to find solutions if the capital cover falls below 90% and it is currently very close to that floor due to the fall in stock prices. It might therefore have to decide about an increase in our contributions, or a reduction in pensions paid or in the interest served on our accounts with Publica.

NB: a 100% capital cover means that the pension fund could sell all its assets at current prices and pay out to each policy-holder his or her accumulated capital, for instance in case of dissolution of the pension fund and transfer of its policy-holders to another pension fund. This is obviously completely unlikely. What is more important is that the pension fund has enough cash to pay out the pensions and there is no reason whatsoever to be worried about that at this stage.

Report on forum of December 11 (Dec. 2007)

After the information forum on the Publica reform organized on November 15 by ACC-EPFL, the School Assembly organized its own on December 11, with the participation of 5 of the 6 EPFL delegates to the employer-employee board. It was the occasion to present what this board obtained, whose members were sometimes violently criticized in news posts, blogs and mails these last months.

The delegates to the employer-employee board faced a very difficult task. Elected by the whole of the personnel at the end of a disputed procedure, they found themselves in front of about a hundred complex pages of legal documents in German and the explicit invitation of the ETH Board to accept all of it “without making a fuss”. Fortunately, these delegates counted in their rows an explosive mixture of sceptics to the diktat of Berne and specialists in the pension systems able to calculate alternatives. They thus succeeded in developing a solution for the ETH domain which inspired all the other decentralized administrative units of the Confederation and which the central administration would have liked to also take up had it not been too late.

The employer-employee board succeeded in convincing of its solution the director of Publica, who championed that solution in front of the director of the federal personnel office, who championed it to the direction of the Department of finances, which finally convinced the Federal Council. The employer-employee board thus skilfully used the urgency to obtain improvements without being sharp with the federal Council and the Parliament, which would have risked some backlash. Conversely, the threats of legal steps issued especially from EPFL were likely to do us much harm, because the authorities and Parliament hate to be challenged on their decisions.
The work of the employer-employee board is not completed yet. In particular, it will examine the advisability for the personnel of the ETH domain of leaving the bosom of Publica to find conditions more favourable at another institution. This option is a little more realistic since the ETH domain has its own pension fund and as the liabilities coverage ratio improved. APEL had already examined this option in 1998, followed by the president of the ETH Board Alexander Zehnder in 2004, who had to acknowledge that the insufficient coverage ratio and the political climate (risk of veto of the federal Council) did not make it possible to extract the ETH domain from Publica.
On the possibility of affiliating the ETH domain to another pension institution than Publica, some mails, blogs and news posts made us believe that it was realizable immediately, therefore that our representatives on the employer-employee board should have refused the affiliation with Publica. Actually, no existing pension institution would have had time to integrate the files of all the policy-holders of the ETH domain (close to 20,000), with new calculation of all their parameters, until the (inalterable) date of passage to the new regime (1.7.08); even less a pension institution to be created by all parts! Not to mention that such a solution requires the approval of the Federal Council and the Parliament.
For us insured of EPFL, the work of the employer-employee board has as a consequence that the pension fund contributions will be lowered a little less than initially envisaged for the younger insured (less than 45 years, even 55 years for the lowest salaries) and that they will increase a little less for the older insured. The employer-employee board also obtained a substantial improvement of the possibilities of voluntary repurchase (to increase ones pension capital). For all additional information, see the websites of the School assembly (http://ae.epfl.ch/publica) and of the human resources (http://rh.epfl.ch/).