If you’re a participant in a state pension, there’s a full-length documentary about public pensions that state officials and their Wall Street allies do not want you to see.
Pension Fight Club, produced and directed by independent filmmaker Douglas Orchard, is a groundbreaking investigative documentary about the enormous yet largely unseen world of America’s public pensions. These funds manage approximately $6.5 trillion in retirement savings on behalf of more than 12 million government workers, retirees and beneficiaries. Despite their public mission—and the financial security of millions depending upon them—their most consequential investment decisions are often shielded from meaningful scrutiny.
The film follows a politically diverse group of pension trustees, teachers, retirees, union representatives, state officials, whistleblowers and reform advocates as they challenge an increasingly opaque system. Coming from red, blue and purple states, they describe a remarkably consistent pattern: Public funds have shifted vast sums into costly and complex alternative investments, including private equity, private credit and hedge funds, while the contracts, fees, risks and performance underlying those investments have become increasingly difficult—even for pension fiduciaries—to examine.
Through firsthand accounts, Pension Fight Club explores how secrecy can conceal excessive or incompletely reported fees, questionable investment practices, conflicts of interest and chronic underperformance. Trustees recount being denied access to agreements governing investments they are legally responsible for overseeing. Teachers and retirees describe benefit reductions and the loss of cost-of-living protections, even as Wall Street firms receive billions of dollars for managing public retirement assets. Whistleblowers and reformers tell of litigation, political attacks and well-funded campaigns directed against those who demand greater transparency.
At its center, the film asks a simple but urgent question: Who is protecting the retirement savings of public workers when those charged with oversight cannot obtain the information necessary to fulfill their fiduciary duties?
Who is protecting the retirement savings of public workers when those charged with oversight cannot obtain the information necessary to fulfill their fiduciary duties?
Institutional Investor independently described the documentary as taking aim at public pensions’ widespread use of alternative investments and the costs and opacity accompanying that shift. But the film reaches beyond investment policy. It is also a story about power—who possesses it, who profits from it and what happens to those who challenge it.
The “Pension Fight Club” is the name Orchard gives to the loose, nonpartisan coalition of individuals fighting to open the books and restore accountability. Their proposed reforms are straightforward: full disclosure of investment contracts and fees, independent fiduciary audits, stronger oversight and an enforceable right for trustees and beneficiaries to know where pension money is invested, how it is performing and who is being paid.
Proposed reforms are straightforward: full disclosure of investment contracts and fees, independent fiduciary audits, stronger oversight and an enforceable right for trustees and beneficiaries to know where pension money is invested, how it is performing and who is being paid.
CalPERS Warning
As indicated in the email below that we received in connection with a public records request of the Teacher Retirement Association of Minnesota, officials at the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation’s largest public pension, are evidently so worried about the documentary that the fund alerted its private sector ally, NCPERS, which, in turn, alerted other public pensions.
In case you haven’t heard of the organization that authored the email, NCPERS sells membership to public pensions and then hosts lavish conventions for pension officials to attend which are underwritten by Wall Street money managers eager to sell their services. NCPERS and its ilk (other public pension conference promoters) claim to supposedly “serve public pensions,” yet derive significant revenue from Wall Street, as well as consistently oppose participant reform initiatives.
The very fact that state pensions and their conference-promoting allies are concerned about the film should be reason enough for every public pension participant to rush to see the documentary. The film will be sweeping through Ohio beginning next Friday, September 11th, at the AMC Easton Town Center Theatre, Columbus, Ohio. (Claim your free ticket.)
Look for it in a theatre near you in the coming months.
To view the trailer for the documentary, click here.
