Profile: Charles A Storke

Employee Benefits

Biography: Employee Benefits

Charles Storke has over 30 years of experience in the employee benefits field. He specialises in representing regional, state-wide and local multi-employer pension and health and welfare plans, including the Western Conference of Teamsters Pension Trust Fund, the largest Taft-Hartley trust in the United States.

Mr Storke has participated in the development of managed health care programmes for multi-employer plans and has assisted those plans in evaluating the legal risks associated with the implementation of aggressive cost-containment programmes. He has advised Taft-Hartley trustees on fiduciary responsibility and prohibited transaction issues involved in a variety of single customer and pooled investment arrangements. He has represented trustees in government investigations and federal court litigation under ERISA, and has represented Taft-Hartley pension plans in defending challenges to employer withdrawal liability assessments under the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980. Most recently, Mr Storke has served as special counsel to trustees of a financially troubled multi-employer pension plan regarding their options under the Pension Protection Act of 2006 rules for multi-employer plans in endangered or critical status.

Mr Storke has participated extensively in the legislative and regulatory process at the federal and state levels to develop coherent and consistent procedures for administering family law court orders directed to pension and welfare plans, including drafting of major portions of the California statute on joinder of employee benefit plans in family law proceedings and development of the California Judicial Council model qualified domestic relations order for spousal and child support.

Mr Storke is a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel.