I thought this back when I first heard about this and now that someone is suing Augsburg-Fortress and it's in the Wall Street Journal - I'm going to publically take the ELCA to task. They cannot distance themselves from this. Augsburg Fortress was allowed to underfund their pension under the guise that it was a "church plan" and not subject to laws designed to keep these kinds of plans from failing. Okay I assume the whole reason the "We are a church" excuse is allowed is because WE ARE A CHURCH AND WE TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN! (well one would hope we take care of others than our own but at least our own for sure!) So now that the pension fund has failed it is REPREHENSIBLE (not to mention embarrassing --no shameful ) for the ELCA to say "Oh that has nothing to do with us" And how EMBARRASSING - no SHAMEFUL that it is taking a LAWSUIT to get the CHURCH to do the right thing. And if we don't care about doing the right thing, we should at least care at HOW BAD this makes us look as a church....like... I don't know ...HYPOCRITES?
My comment on your posting on this topic on FB kind of rides the fence. But now I'm also thinking about many years ago, when I worked at the old ALC offices in Minneapolis, these offices were upstairs, above the Augsburg offices. Businesses were separate, but obviously connected, like conjoined twins.
ReplyDeleteI'm more upset with the ELCA than Augsburg-Fortress. I think the ELCA needs to help these employees. And the law needs to be changed so that the church cannot be exempt from laws protecting employees from this sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of when I was on the board of a Lutheran school that screwed over their empoyees because they "were a church and were doing good things" and can't afford to pay their teachers a decent salary and benefits. You don't get to use the fact that you are a church and "do good things" as an excuse to screw people.