You Own Wall Street › Employer plans › Waste Management
Waste Management 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options
Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $2.21bn of the $2.80bn in the Waste Management plan votes in secret. Fidelity 500 Index Fund, the most common fund in the plans we track, publishes every vote: answer 3 of its ballots, then see your result.
The question on the ballot
As filed
Waste Management 401(k) match and balances, from the filing
- Company money in
- about $3,150 per active participant
- $120m in plan year 2024
- Employees saved
- about $5,520 each
- $211m in plan year 2024
- Average balance
- $91,600
- 44,522 people with a balance
- In the plan
- $4.08bn
- at the end of plan year 2024
Company money is the match plus any other employer contributions, averaged over all 38,168 active participants, including anyone who did not contribute. The filing reports dollars, not the match formula; the plan’s summary plan description states the formula.
SourceThe plan’s annual report to the Department of Labor — Form 5500, Schedule H, plan year 2024 · filed by WASTE MANAGEMENT, INC. as “WASTE MANAGEMENT RETIREMENT SAVINGS PLAN” · EIN 731309529, plan number 001 · search the filings
The Waste Management 401(k) holds $2.80bn. Of the $2.21bn we could identify from the plan’s own filing, every dollar sits in a fund that publishes no record of how it voted your shares — collective trusts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.
SourceWaste Management’s own annual retirement-plan filing with the SEC (Form 11-K, Schedule of Assets) · open the filing
| What the plan holds | Vehicle | Voting record | Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2030 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $451m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2040 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $345m |
| Waste Management, Inc.listed as “Common Stock” | Employer stock | Voted by the plan trustee | $339m |
| John Hancock Trust Company Collective Investment Trustlisted as “John Hancock Stable Value Return Trust” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $331m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend Income Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $209m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2035 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $195m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2045 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $167m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2050 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $167m |
| Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporatedlisted as “Self-Directed Brokerage Accounts” | Brokerage window | Whatever the saver buys | $151m |
| SEI Trust Companylisted as “PIMCO RealPath Blend 2055 Collective Trust Funds” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $144m |
| Great Gray Collective Investment Trustlisted as “Lord Abbett Total Return Fund II BP” | Collective trust or separate account | NONE | $135m |
| Notes receivable from participantslisted as “Various maturity dates with interest rates ranging from 3.25 % to 9.50 %” | Bonds | No shares to vote | $100m |
The 12 largest holdings in the plan. “Vehicle” is the description the filing itself gives each investment.
Why there is nothing to show
A mutual fund has to file Form N-PX every year listing every vote it cast on your behalf. A collective investment trust does not. It is a bank-run vehicle sold only inside retirement plans, it is cheaper, and it is now where most 401(k) default money sits — including most target-date funds, which is where savers who never chose anything are put.
So the shares bought with Waste Management employees’ retirement savings are voted every proxy season — on executive pay, on board seats, on climate and workforce proposals — and there is no public document anywhere recording how. This is not an oversight by Waste Management; it is what the disclosure rules currently require, which is to say: nothing.
What you can do
Check whether your plan offers any registered fund as an alternative — those publish their records, and you can read them here. If it does not, the menu itself is the thing that has to change, and that is a decision made by the plan’s fiduciary committee, not by you alone.
See how funds that do publish voted →
CoverageWe classified 100% of this plan’s assets from the filing. The figure above is the share of the money we could classify; anything we could not identify is excluded from it rather than assumed either way.
Other employer plans
The largest employer plans on the site, and a few more. Each page shows what the plan’s funds did with the shares its savers paid for.