By Debra Bruno
December 11, 2017
美国民主党在全美50个州和80多个国家都有成员.C. Bar is beginning a regular feature to profile the people who make up our community. Read about your peers, their lives, and their work around the world.
If it wasn’t for his important role in the world of retirement benefits, this could be seen as a story of a lawyer who found another calling in sailing.
Carroll Savage, 83, 是追随中年对帆船的热情吗, 驾驶一艘45英尺长的帆船环游世界. 但是艾文斯的澳博app，菲利普斯 & Barker, Chartered also is considered one of the farsighted lawyers who helped institute a new era in retirement plans—systems that have changed the world of employee benefits.
Savage’s work helped both Congress and the rest of the country understand and implement the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974 and the 401(k) plan, instituted in 1978. The changes, says Savage, began “at a time when companies were trying to get out from the huge liabilities they had with traditional pension plans.”
It’s uncertain whether Savage’s contributions to the retirement savings landscape will get him a place in history, 或者这可能是他故事的另一部分. After all, not many attorneys manage to convince their law firms to let them take off as many as three months in the summer to sail around the world.
Even fewer decide to take up sailing despite never having actually learned how to sail
Savage says he was “not burned out but ready to do something different” when he hit middle age in the mid-1980s, after years of working on matters involving flexible compensation.
“I can remember many times getting phone calls at home in the swimming pool, and having to take my motorcycle and rush to the Hill on a Sunday morning to see a staff person who wanted to talk about something,” he says. “我总是在灭火.”
Up against that reality was his romantic notion that maybe he should have been a round-the-world sailor or an undersea archeologist, 但我甚至不知道如何驾驶一艘船,” he says. 他在远离大海的地方长大, 在南卡罗来纳内陆的一个小镇, 说话仍然带着绅士的南方口音.)
Savage convinced his law firm to adopt a policy allowing lawyers to take an extra month of vacation every four years. He added that to his usual month-long vacation, but even two months wasn’t enough. So Savage negotiated a reduced percentage of his partnership to take yet another month off.
Next, 他自学了航海和航海, and, with his wife and their blended family—two children each from their previous marriages, and two together—he “took ‘em all on board” and sailed around the world. Not every family member joined every summer, but they all had time at sea. 整个环球航行花了12年时间. Savage would sail as much as possible and leave the boat in a port with a caretaker for the winter.
事情并不总是一帆风顺. 这家人于1985年离开美国, 1988年通过巴拿马运河, 并于1990年到达澳大利亚. Next, 他们去了巴厘岛和印度尼西亚, and found themselves in the Gulf of Aden near the Red Sea in 1991, 当时波斯湾战争正在进行. “We did get shot at by some Sudanese army people who said we were in an area where we were not allowed,” Savage recalls.
Eventually, the boat retired itself, with a dead motor and a rusted-out hull, so Savage gave it up.
2014年，他出版了回忆录， Caiad:环球航行, 这本250页的著作结合了他对哲学的思考, navigation, poetry, 和家人一起学习航海的技术细节. 萨维奇说他并不后悔. “It’s been a challenge, kept my mind active, 我可以去冒险，享受美好的家庭生活,” he says. “So I don’t brood on it.”
萨维奇加入了艾文斯，菲利普斯 & Barker in 1963, 从1968年就开始在福利领域工作了吗, and is senior partner in the firm’s Executive Compensation and Benefits practice. In the 1970s he testified before Congress during hearings that led to the development of ERISA, which established minimum standards for employee pension plans in private industry. He also was involved in the 1978 amendments to the Internal Revenue Code that gave rise to 401(k) and cafeteria plans.
Prior to ERISA, companies were looking to replace the old pension system in which they contributed over the years to a fund that would go to employees on retirement. 相反，雇员将向雇主匹配的基金中加入资金. (斯图德贝克-帕卡德案例, in which a plant closure in 1963 led to the company defaulting on its obligation to provide retirement funds for its hourly workers, 这象征着养老金改革的必要性.)
Today, of course, opinion is divided over whether these changes were a good thing. “你可以持负面看法, as many have, and say that 401(k) basically killed the traditional pension plan,” says Savage. “但我认为它无论如何都快死了. You could say it saved employees from what was going to be a lot worse result.”
Savage’s involvement started with his firm’s clients—Eastman Kodak and Xerox—that were some of the only large corporations offering flexible retirement programs. Another client, TRW, 总部位于克利夫兰的航空航天公司, wanted to develop a system of employee benefits known as the cafeteria plan, says Savage, which allowed employees to choose between different sorts of benefits.
“我真的没有任何国会山游说的经验,” says Savage, 但他愿意介入，解释ERISA的各个方面. “我已经习惯了在参议院委员会面前作证.”
与今天有一个显著的不同, he says, was that Democrat and Republican members of Congress could work together to draft legislation. 萨维奇说:“那时候的国会是如此不同. “I’m almost nostalgic about how gentlemanly they were and how easily they reached across—they didn’t even think of it as an aisle. 当时没有敌意，没有你今天看到的那种敌意.”
