Pension plans may soon be a thing of the past — yet another benefit American workers are kissing goodbye in the name of higher profit margins. Even successful companies such as Verizon and IBM are now freezing their pensions and using global competition as an excuse to shift the risk onto employees.
“With Verizon, we’re talking about a company at the top of its game,” Karen Friedman, director of policy studies for the Pension Rights Center, an advocacy group in Washington, D.C., told The New York Times. “They have a huge profit. Their CEO has given himself a huge compensation package. And then they’re saying, ‘In order to compete, sorry, we have to freeze the pensions.’ ”
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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30 Comments
Just wondering why the Eagle doesn’t do a story on the aircraft industry here in Wichita. I think that they would find the same thing going on right here in DOODAA.
Isnt Kansas government also underfunding KPERS?
LOoks like if you want good benefits and a pension plus lifetime employment, you needed to be employed by the government.
Aircraft companies usually give 50 cents on the dollar to an employees 401k. I’d rather have that than a pension any day.
Such comments demonstrate, again, why Americans tend to give the Bush administration carte blanche in the ‘war on terror.’
Apparently we Americans no longer understand risk and how to measure it (Todd’s comment is in re: financial risk, but risk is risk).
A pension is a VERY valuable employee benefit when it’s in addition to a 401(k). If the npv of a cash-balance pension benefit is quartered and the nominal quartered amount is added over the subsequent 4 years to a 401(k) – that’s what IBM did – then the employer is adding risk to your life. Which is fine, but again I have my doubts about whether Americans are prepared to measure the risk, much less react to it with best interests in mind.
I’ll never understand the mindset that you’d rather have a guaranteed nickel than a probable dollar. The fact that you apparently don’t think I understand money and how it operates is typical arrogance.
Pensions are going away and there isn’t a thing anybody can do about it. If you don’t learn to marshal your own money, you’re probably not going to be allowed to keep it, pension or no pension.
Not to mention that most 401k plans offer a low risk fund for those who want to live like they’re on a pension after they retire.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, let me point out that there’s a subtle yet profound difference between low risk and no risk.
When you’re closer to retiring you’ll probably understand both the value of a guaranteed nickle over a possible dollar (at 20.0001/1 probability, I’ll take the nickle thankyouverymuch) and the value of a no risk pension.
I hope you find a flavor of dog food you like.
“I hope you find a flavor of dog food you like.”
If you had ever been poor, you’d know its cat food, not dog food.
I don’t intend to find out by betting my future on an underfunded pension.
Pensions are a little like Social Security. They fail to take into account the possibility of changing buisness climates (and changing demographics).
If the business climate changes drastically (or the demographic changes in the wrong direction)they become unsustainable.
I currently have both but if I had to choose between the two,give me the 401k and the matching funds any day.
Pensions hell, big business wants to take us back to the one dollar for a twelve-hour work day, seven days a week times! You workers let your union membership go, and bought the businessmen’s lines about fair treatment, and forgot that your employer’s only concern was his own bank account. Now, the labor movement will have to start winning your rights all over again!Tighten that belt; jobs are going to get a lot worse before they can get better!
If our pensions are stolen by large American corporations we need to resotre democracy AT HOME! Wht the hell are we doing in Iraq?
Uncle Sam
Unk,Staying out of the way, and away from our jobs, so our employers can abscond with our pensions, and anything else they can get away with!
First they take away the pensions. Then they take away the 401k matching funds.
Don’t you people get it? There’s a class war going on in this country. Jed has got it right. If you talk about it, you’re guilty of “class warfare,” but if you DO it like businesses do, then it’s just business as usual.
To earn the equivalent of a 20,000 dollar a year pension, you would have to have saved up 500,000 dollars (500,000 x .04 interest = 20,000 dollars).
My wife and I are doing this and as long as we don’t have another Bush in the White House, our savings and investments should get us there, knock on wood.
But how the hell is a janitor or a Wal-Mart employee going to salt away a half a million when they don’t even get a living wage now?
Todd, you’re a selfish pr**k.
BTW, the Social Security debacle that the Bush Administration trotted out was another perfect example of corporate give-aways at the expense of the average worker.
Who can be so naive as to think that the first thing to get eliminated by Social Security “privatization” would be the corporation’s contribution to the Social Security fund?
Insults. Now I remember why I abandoned reading these forums. It’s almost as bad as if Galahad himself was posting.
It’s official right now!!!
THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM HAS VAPORIZED!!!
Franklin Roosevelt got us out of the great depression started by President Hoover (another Republican) and stoped starving in soup lines ….. and got Americans back to work with GOOD manufacturing jobs. He started a retirement program for everyone (Social Security) , added bancriptsey laws to protect Americans, created over time pay for extra hours ( Labor Laws, and made it American corporations job to take care of American workers.
Now our American anti-christ tears it ALL down. First offloads white collar jobs to India, China and Russia. Then destroys American manufacturing segment of our economy. The he re-writes bankrupsey laws against workers. Then tries several times to eliminat overtime pay for all workers. Can you teel who his daddy is? Can you tell he we to an prestigious IVY LEAGUE university that cost $30,000 a semester? Not bad for a complete idiot? Still proves MONEY is EVERYTHING TODAY. If you aint got at least one BILLION dollars – you have NO hope! Where is the American Dream?
The affluent can’t stand a kid to pull along side their limo Rolls Royce in a sporty Chevrolet. It is the Bush administrations plan to put us back in the depression days. You have the ultra very very rich (billionaires) and the masses begging for a crumb of bread. The American dream is destroyed more and more every day!
If we have our lives work stolen and our promise of our earned retirement stolen – we need to place all effort, work, and toil on democracy in America! If anyting is sacred …. it is the American pension! Wake the hell up America!
PS sez: “But how the hell is a janitor or a Wal-Mart employee going to salt away a half a million when they don’t even get a living wage now?
Todd, you’re a selfish pr**k.”
I’m a selfish pr**ck? How is that? Because I’m realistic? Because I’m not STUPID enough to hang my hopes for retirement on SS and pensions that are clearly going away?
How about you explain on what planet a janitor or Wal Mart worker gets a pension to have taken away to begin with.
Some of you must be living truly miserable lives to come up with this tripe to justify your diatribes.
Todd! Because you have a heart and brains. Leftist Liberals don’t have either, so you are selfish!
;)
Unca Sam sez: “First offloads white collar jobs to India, China and Russia. Then destroys American manufacturing segment of our economy. The he re-writes bankrupsey laws against workers. Then tries several times to eliminat overtime pay for all workers.”
Everything contained in that paragraph is a lie. No wonder you dopes can’t win an election to save your lives, even when the Repubs have a moron for a candidate.
Show me a Democrat who truly is about American jobs and not in the corporate pocket just as much as the fattest cat Repub, and I’ll show you the Loch Ness monster.
Ah . . . okay, Todd. Thanks for responding. Now that I see what I’m dealing with, I’ll w r i t e r e a l s l o w.
The janitor and Wal-Mart worker obviously AREN’T getting a pension, and they desperately need one BECAUSE they can’t possibly save enough to retire on.
WalMart is the largest corporation in the world–bigger than GM, MicroSoft and a bunch of others COMBINED. They COULD pay pensions if they wanted but why should they when they’ve got all the Todd’s on their side?
And I regret the “selfish p**ck” remark. I don’t know for a fact that you’re a selfish p**ck. I do know that you express sentiments in your posts that I associate with selfish p**ckiness.
And Steve.
While you’re not reading the posts because your “so offended” by personal insults?
Why don’t you stop posting too . . .
Galahad,Todd is correct: companies go under and pensions do out the window. Companies dropping pension plans is not necessarily a bad thing. 401K’s are a much better way to go. That way, both you and the employer are contributing to your retirement. And, as Todd says, there are very low risk plans for 401K holders. In my opinion, people should take some responsibility for their own retirement. Sounds like a fair deal to me.
Whether or not WalMart offers a 401K is something I’m not familiar with. If they do, employees would be wise to join and use it. Pension plans, on the other hand, usually require an employee to work for the company for more than ten years before they start to pay anything. How many employees stay with WalMart for ten years or longer. With a 401k, you can roll it over to the next job, etc, with no penalty. That makes more sense than working eight years for some company with nothing to show for it. Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
Bash WalMart if you will, but they are very successful, employ thousands of people who otherwise might not be working at all, and are responsible for lower costs of goods. For instance: the olives I like are $4.96 at WalMart, the exact same brand costs $8.49 at Dillon’s. Where do you think I buy them at? Where do you think the person on a limited budget is going to buy milk? The store that costs $2.10 for a half gallon, or the one that costs $1.76? If it wasn’t for WalMart, they’d be paying $2.10. It is estimated that WalMart saves the public over $5 billion annually in food costs alone. Drive through any WalMart parking lot, and you will see very expensive cars owned by very rich people shopping there. They know a bargain when they see one. Don’t like em? Don’t shop there
A wise man once said, “I need not trace a dollar till it buys a human being or kills one”. Walmart with it’s practice to drive American values in to the ground …. and all the Americans who work for them ….. by paying low minimum wages, refraining from paying decent (any) health care – is KILLING AMERICANS! Their employes can never retire, never afford health care, never have more than a meager existance. This is Bush’s America! The ultra-rich become increasingly wealthy and anyone else becomes destitute!
He offloads MILLIONS 4 million IT jobs outside the USA. Makes four attempts to cancell overtime pay to working Americans. Rearrainges backrupsy laws so workers can never get out of paying for debt forever. Walmart the biggest retail company on the planet is doing well. The big oil companies are making a killing. How is everyone else suffering? How is you gasoline and heating bills?
Anyone with an ounce of sense understand that walmart uses preditor tatics and eliminates competition. What are you going to do when Walmart is the only place to buy food and you have the same choice with how to buy cheap food as you now have to buy cheap gasoline? I hope you understand when your choice will be can I afford insurance for a heart bypass or food to eat. Maybe you too will die because of the class war taking place and Walmart, Bush politics, and oil companies being placed above the well being of Americans and America? Just a thought? The rate of decline is staggering? Now we have all Bush’e national debt to pay off. All our companies even will be out of work and broke by then!
I.R. Runner
Breaking News Flash!
GOVERNMENT ERECTS WALL ALONG BORDER – TO KEEP AMERICANS FROM FLEEING TO MEXICO! (Last place in western hemisphere with afffordable food and climate)
The story says billionairs on party yachts sail along the cost to film Americans fleeing for their lives! They get a real kick at how destitute the average American now has become! More to follow…
Who put this fool in the Whita house? He wasn’t elected?
Uncle Sam
I am so sick of this embrace so many seem to have on economic servitude!
Wal mart oghtta be broken with an anti trust lawsuit. This octopus of greed is the highest villain in the culture of greed that has reigned in this country since the Reagan Administration. (And I did vote for that turncoat sellout in 1984 when I was young and dumb)
The destruction of pensions is just another symptom of this sick greed. Employers see employees as “human resources”. They treat people just as they do companies; temporary vehicles for short term profit. In the long run, this way of doing busisiness is suicide. Those who profit from it will ultimately have to answer not just to those they have used and abused. They will have to answer for the fall of America as we have known it. They may likely have to answer as well to the historic forces ever brought into play when the few exploit the many. In short, they may find that their ill- gotten goods cannot save them from a rising tide of righteuos indignation.
Maybe Melissa and the source she quoted know something about Verizon that others don’t know. With a stock price declining from $42 some 15 months ago to around $32 today, it doesn’t seem that many people are optimistic about Verizon’s future.