Is your company trying to steal your pension? Part 2

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Is your company trying to steal your pension? Part 2

Post by Steve Plonk » August 17th, 2013, 12:08 pm

Is Your Company Trying to Steal Your Pension?

Postby Steve Plonk » Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:27 pm
If you're working for a company nowadays and have been for quite some time,
you need to stay vigilant and heed what this disturbing series of articles says.
These are quotes from Youtube and "US New and World Report", "The Daily Ticker" et al. and are very disturbing to working folks all over. :shock:

See links and quote below:

http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/pla ... ment-heist


http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ti ... 51510.html
Traditional Pensions are Casualties of a Retirement Heist
September 15, 2011 RSS Feed Print Companies often say they are freezing their traditional pension plans and eliminating retiree medical benefits to remain competitive with pension-less employers overseas and cope with an aging workforce and stock market losses. But in a shocking new book, Retirement Heist: How Companies Plunder and Profit from the Nest Eggs of American Workers, Wall Street Journal reporter Ellen Schultz explains that pension cuts are actually an accounting maneuver that is being used to boost corporate earnings. The massive retirement liabilities that many companies report are actually caused by unfunded executive pensions and deferred compensation plans, not the pension obligations to ordinary employees, she found. U.S. News asked Schultz to explain why traditional pension plans are really being frozen. Excerpts:

[See 7 Reasons You Don't Have a Pension.]

Why do profitable companies freeze their pension plans or close them to new workers? The retirement crisis was not an accident. The retirement crisis was caused by actions of the companies. They had incredibly overfunded plans and chose to cut benefits and ultimately freeze the plans, even though there was plenty of money in them to pay the benefits. Initially people didn’t understand that the benefits were being cut because companies hid it.

How is pension plan accounting used to boost shareholder value? Cutting the benefits actually gives companies a boost to profits. It’s an accounting effect. If you promise to pay $100 million to retirees, that’s a debt on the books. If you cancel that debt, then you get to keep the profit. Freezing the plan not only let them keep the money in the plan, but gave them a boost to profits.

[See Jobs That Still Offer Traditional Pensions.]

Do companies need to cut retirement benefits to stay competitive? When companies began cutting benefits it wasn’t to remain competitive because the plans had a huge surplus and there was no cost to the company. What they were doing is taking the plan and finding a way to convert some of the assets into a benefit for the company and also to boost their profits. It’s not accurate for them to say they had to do this to remain competitive.

How are pension plans for ordinary workers and executive compensation related? People have to realize that when companies say their costs are spiraling, maybe it’s the executive’s costs that are spiraling. In many cases the additional pension costs and boost in liability are just because of the executive pensions. The plans for regular workers are tax advantaged and subsidized by taxpayers. If you offer a pension plan, it is supposed to be for everyone more or less. Plans for executives don’t get special tax breaks, but companies have found ways of trying to get the same tax breaks as the plan for regular employees and have found strategies to get money from the regular plan to pay executives. They have been cutting the benefits for the rank and file employees and boosting the pay for the executives.

[See 21 Workplace Benefits That Are Rapidly Disappearing.]

If your company has promised you a pension and retiree health benefits, should you count on getting them in retirement? If you do have a pension, companies can cut it going forward, but they cannot take away something you have already earned. Under law that is protected. You also have to be able to recognize that your pension is being cut because it’s easy to present the information in a way that looks as if nothing has changed. You cannot count on a pension being retained going forward. If you’ve been promised retiree medical, in most cases the promises are not enforceable unless you are in a union. A lot of companies will say they will let you continue your health coverage until you are eligible for Medicare, but then later say they can’t afford that and are going to need to charge you a whole lot more than they did. The people who are better protected are those who are in a union and are in a collectively bargained agreement. You really have to be self-reliant. If your company has a pension or retiree medical, you really cannot bet the farm on that. These are things that are under assault and companies are trying to take them away.
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Re: Is Your Company Trying to Steal Your Pension?

Postby Arcadia » Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:31 pm
well, the provincial state in fact have been stealing more than a half of my salary for fifteen years (I have only "en blanco" less than a half of the final sum), I guess they will be plan something for my pension too...! :roll: :lol:

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Re: Is your company trying to steal your pension?

Post by Steve Plonk » August 17th, 2013, 12:12 pm

Welcome to my Column, "Life in the Horse Lane".
Those of you that seem to find something humorous in these posts, ought to think through it again. :o :shock:

Pension loss may happen to anyone on the planet, because companies & governments are not insuring that workers receive their pensions after a lifetime of hard work. We all may be older some day & need to depend on a pension after we retire. Pensions must be insured. :) 8)

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Re: Is your company trying to steal your pension? Part 2

Post by Steve Plonk » November 1st, 2013, 12:58 pm

Here are some copies of recent posts on my old thread:
In the "Culture, Politics, & Philosophy" forum...
I asked everyone to post here in the new thread...


Re: Is Your Company Trying to Steal Your Pension?

Post by Arcadia » Mon Aug 19, 2013 7:20 pm

qué tal la mudanza?! :lol: :D

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Re: Is Your Company Trying to Steal Your Pension?

Post by Atehequa » Thu Oct 31, 2013 11:18 pm

State employee here and they're trying to steal my soul
I'm gonna walk before they make me run

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Re: Is your company trying to steal your pension? Part 2

Post by Steve Plonk » November 21st, 2013, 11:42 am

Democrats should stand their ground on Social Security & even push for an expansion
of coverage. See quotes below: From the "e Plum Line" in the "Washington Post"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plu ... ins-steam/

e Plum Line
Liberal push to expand Social Security gains steam

By Greg Sargent
November 5 at 1:44 pm

Senator Sherrod Brown is joining the push to expand Social Security, and he’s making a startling argument: Dems should go on offense on entitlements, rather than let Republicans and Beltway fiscal scolds frame the discussion as one over how much benefits should be cut, not one over whether they should be cut at all.

“There are two fundamental numbers that make this a moral case for Democrats to make,” Brown told me in an interview today. “One is that a third of seniors rely on Social Security for virtually their entire income. The other is that more than half of seniors rely on Social Security for significantly more than half their income.”

Brown is endorsing Tom Harkin’s bill to expand Social Security benefits, which would boost benefits for beneficiaries by $70 per month, change the cost-of-living calculation to keep pace with rising costs of things seniors need, and scrap the payroll tax cap to strengthen the program over the long term. The crusade to expand Social Security got started with liberal bloggers such as Atrios began pushing for it, and gained some momentum when liberal groups such as the Progressive Change Campaign Committee began mobilizing behind the idea.

With Washington chatter centered on a “grand bargain” or at least a “mini bargain” that might involve entitlement cuts, expanding Social Security might seem like a dead end. But when I pushed Brown on whether Dems would rally behind the idea — after all, Chained CPI is in the President’s budget — he insisted Dems should not cooperate in allowing a “Serious” center-right consensus that equates “fiscal responsibility” with cutting entitlement benefits to reign unchallenged.

“The Serious People — with a capital S and a capital P — all have really good pensions and good health care and good salaries,” Brown said. “Raise the cap. There are ways we can bring a lot of money into Social Security. Some Democrats are a bit cowed by the Serious People.”

Brown argues that if Republicans push for Social Security benefits cuts as part of any deal, Dems should counter with the Harkin proposal to shift the terms of the debate in a Democratic direction. Democratic priorities, he said, should be centered on the idea that declining pensions and wages (and savings) are undermining retirement security, and added that the public strongly opposed gutting social insurance.

“The situation for seniors is only going to get worse, because the assault on pensions and wages is making it more and more difficult for a worker to save for the future,” Brown said. “Why are we having a debate over how much we are going to hurt seniors? The debate should be over how we should structure a pension for seniors that will help them. Why would we play on their playing field? Democrats need to play offense here. Force Republicans to say what it is they really want to do. Republicans just don’t like social insurance.”

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