Anybody Read "Retirement Heist" by Ellen E. Schultz? It Will Make Your Blood Boil
This book is the result of years of digging through SEC and IRS filings, as well as numerous interviews. The book tells how greedy companies have turned pension plans into tax shelters, and profit centers through exploiting loopholes, ambiguous regulations, and new accounting rules. In doing so they have also exaggerated retiree burdens to lobby for government handouts, secretly cut employee pensions while boosting executive pensions, and mislead employees and shareholders. New flexibility in accounting rules have also turned retiree plans into earnings-management tools, helping to boost stock prices and, thereby, executive pay.
The story begins in 1999 after the stock-market run-up in the 1980s which left corporations with over $250 billion in excess pension fund assets, aided also by years of downsizing and 1990 and 1974 laws limiting raids on fund surpluses and requiring adequate funding. Many of the corporations hadn't contributed to their pensions in over ten years, yet had enough assets to cover all current/future retirees to age 100. Their lobbying then allowed new uses for those monies.
EVERYONE should read this IMO
Cassandra
(9,694 posts)or a reading with her on C-Span.
cbrer
(1,831 posts)we can do it
(12,210 posts)fuck the thieving bastards
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)The good "corporations" will find a way to do their best to line their pockets with it.
Even the current bankruptcy at Hostess is more about the Union pension than slower sales of Twinkies.
emsimon33
(3,128 posts)we can do it
(12,210 posts)damn, they are nearly shameless in the looting of the middle class. Filthy rotten bastards
Citizen Worker
(1,785 posts)you guessed it, the two business parties.
we can do it
(12,210 posts)antigop
(12,778 posts)we can do it
(12,210 posts)MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)The Last Democrat
(73 posts)Continental Can company managers had used a secret program with the code name BELL which is a reverse acronym for Lets Limit Employee Benefits.
we can do it
(12,210 posts)if your library doesn't have it please recommend that they get it. It so debunks the lies of how "burdensome" and unaffordable our pensions are. We've got to keep educating each other to survive.
hay rick
(7,653 posts)Excerpt here: http://www.retirementheist.com/excerpts/
From the article:
In November 1999, a group of the nations leading pension experts met at the Labor Department in Washington to discuss a $250 billion problem. After eight years of double-digit returns, the pension plans at American corporations had more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in excess assets. Not a shortage of assets. Excess assets. At some companies, the surpluses had reached almost laughable levels: $25 billion at GE; $24 billion at Verizon; $20 billion at AT&T; $7 billion at IBM.
...
Employers couldnt lay off every middle-aged worker, of course, but there were other ways to slow the pension growth of those who remained. They could cut pensions, but there were certain constraints. Pension law prohibits employers from taking away pensions being paid out to retirees, and employers cant rescind benefits its employees have locked in up to that point. But they can stop the growth, by freezing the plans, or slow it, by switching to a less generous formula.
That was the route Cigna took. The company estimated that the move would cut benefits of older workers by 40 percent or more, which meant that as much as $80 million that had been earmarked for their pensions would remain in the plan. The challenge was how to cut pensions without provoking an employee uprising. Pushing people off the pension escalator just when theyre about to lock in the fruits of their long tenure would be like telling a traveler that his nearly one million frequent flier miles were being rescindedthey werent going to like it.
Cignas solution to this communications challenge? Dont tell employees. In September 1997, consulting firm Mercer signed a $200,000 consulting contract to prepare the written communication to Cigna employees, describing the changes without disclosing the negative effects. One of these was a benefits newsletter Cigna sent employees in November 1997, entitled Introducing Your New Retirement Program. On the front, Message from CEO Bill Taylor declared: I am pleased to announce that on January 1, 1998, CIGNA will significantly enhance its retirement program. These enhancements will make our retirement program highly competitive.
dmr
(28,352 posts)I worry about my pension. I still have a few years.
erpowers
(9,350 posts)I plan to read it this year. Last year I saw Mrs. Schultz discuss her book on C-SPAN.